


Delayed Metamorphosis

by LyricalRiot



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Beta Ben Solo, Doctor/Patient Dynamics, Explicit Consent, F/M, Hysteria, Mating Bites, Mating Cycles/In Heat, No Pregnancy, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Omega Verse, One Shot, Oral Sex, Rutting, Scenting, Sex, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal Sex, Victorian Medicine, in two parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26936668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalRiot/pseuds/LyricalRiot
Summary: Doctor Benjamin Solo is the junior partner in an omega health practice, where they specialize in the treatment of omega hysteria. Ever the professional, as well as a confirmed Beta, Ben is rigidly immune to the nature of his work and the condition of his patients — until one day, when a young omega girl walks through the door. Treating her will change everything about Doctor Solo, including who he thought he was.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 75
Kudos: 625





	1. Chapter 1

Most agreed that it had nothing to do with the moon.

Certainly Doctor Ackbar believed that to be true. Once, perhaps, the superstitions of a less enlightened age had given rise to this idea that omega hysteria, an affliction inextricably tied to cosmic ebbs and flows, followed a lunar pattern. But of course they didn't believe that _now_. It was 1901 for heaven's sake! They knew _exactly_ what caused omega hysteria, and it had nothing to do with the moon.

Ben Solo, a young doctor on the cutting edge of the latest science, knew this, of course. He _knew_ that hysteria resulted from a vengeful, unfertilized womb and misappropriated biles as could only go awry in those born under the hyper-fertile designation. Betas did not suffer hysteria. Their biles could not become unbalanced in that way.

Ben attended the lectures. He read the recent studies. He enjoyed keeping up to date with the newest courses of treatments — the advancement of knowledge thrilled him.

But none of that stopped him from noticing how Doctor Ackbar's clinic saw a steady influx of patient exactly in tandem with the waxing of the moon. Their busiest day, in fact, was invariably on the day of the brightest, fullest lunar zenith, after which there would be a slow decline of patients until the new moon.

Curious. Perhaps nonsense, but inescapable nonetheless.

Ackbar, of course, did not want to hear of it. If Ben ever observed this phenomenon to him, the older, more experienced physician would shut him down in no uncertain terms and chastise him for being so superstitious.

"I did not bring you into my practice to preach witchcraft at me," he'd seethe.

So Ben didn't bring it up. He just quietly went about his business, conveniently scheduling travel to medical conferences around the time of the new moon, when he knew they would have very few, if any, patients seeking treatment. He was only a junior partner in Ackbar's well-established practice, and thus had no influence in the running thereof.

But perhaps Ackbar noticed too, in his own stubborn way, because he would only schedule his own extracurricular activities around the same time. And so they often took turns tending an empty clinic while the other went about their business.

Which was all to say, these were the circumstances which led to Doctor Solo being the sole physician in attendance when a certain young omega walked through the door of the clinic on the very day when they expected to have no patients at all.

Despite being 'on duty,' as it were, Ben did not plan to be at the clinic for the entire day. He ate a leisurely breakfast and groomed himself meticulously — once again cutting the shadowy beard that followed his jaw closer than current fashion demanded. Ackbar was always on him to let it grow longer and thicker, that their clientele responded better to these signals of masculinity, but Ben did as suited himself alone. He preferred it clean and close.

He buttoned his waistcoat and checked his hair in the mirror once more before stepping out of his room, overcoat slung over his arm. He would enjoy a quiet afternoon on the lake. He'd rent a rowboat and enjoy the solitude.

This was one of the few luxuries left to him after joining Ackbar's practice. Their hours were demanding, and treating omega hysteria left him unable to practice his beloved calligraphy — he couldn't afford the strain on his wrists or fingers. So a slow wander through the park, a day-trip to the newest gallery, or a visit to his parents, these were the kinds of entertainment left to him now.

Down in the foyer of the clinic, he pulled his hat off the peg where he kept it, giving a knowing nod to Gwen, their receptionist. The woman was of the _other_ designation, hyper-virile, known as _alpha_. She was happily settled down, however, and bore that reassuring mating mark which made her unthreatening to their vulnerable clients.

She would have to be in the office all day. Regrettable, that, but she didn't seem to mind. She had the newest horror novel ready to read for the day.

Just as he'd donned his hat, though, the door to the clinic opened and a young woman stepped in from the blinding sunlight. Ben was far too professional to sigh or curse his misfortune, merely blinking back a twinge of disappointment. There weren't _supposed_ to be clients today. Aberrant biology had never walked through that door, as far as he was aware.

And yet here she was.

Gwen's face registered surprise, and Ben caught the subtle way she scrubbed at her nose. He took off his hat again. He knew that sign. Gwen had caught the girl's scent. Her primary function, after arranging the appointments, was to interpret the olfactory signals to which Ben and Ackbar were ignorant. As Betas, they could not detect the nuanced scents of their clients. Gwen could.

That look on her face and the discreet motion meant to shield her from a strong scent told Ben that the girl definitely needed assistance.

"Good day," Ben said carefully, replacing his hat on the peg. He hung his coat beside it.

The girl finched at the sound of his voice. She passed a wild look between Ben and Gwen. "They told me it was safe here."

"It is," Gwen assured her with a smile, recovering from her surprise like a true professional.

"But — I'm — they said this was a place for — omegas…" again, that incredulous look flicked between them.

Ben was used to this surprise. People often mistook him for an alpha in the beginning.

"Doctor Solo is a beta," Gwen said reassuringly.

"And Gwendolyn is happily mated. You need not be afraid," Ben added.

She looked very young, this girl. Maybe not even twenty. The flush on her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes told him she was probably close to her _time_. He wouldn't know for sure without an examination, but it concerned him that one so young, being this close to illness, was walking around in society unchaperoned. Her clothes were...not quite threadbare, but certainly not _nice_ either. The best that could be said of them was that they were functional. She didn't have gloves, or a hat. Both bad signs.

Still, she had a clean, fresh face framed by well-groomed nutmeg hair, and a gleam of intelligence in her hazel eyes. She was pretty, by any standard measurement, even if she was obviously poor.

"Do you need help?" Ben asked her, since she seemed to be hanging back by the door, unconvinced.

He wanted to help her. The urge surprised him. The lake sounded more pleasant than an hour of contouring and cramping his hand, but something inside him stirred with compassion.

The girl glanced at him and then away, directing herself at Gwen instead. With small, nervous steps, she approached the desk. "Yes, I think I do need help. They told me this was the place to go if I…" She blushed, a becoming bloom of color over her cheeks. "But they said you might not be able to see me for a few days. They said you're very busy, but I'm afraid I need help quite urgently."

"You're in luck," Gwen said, her kind smile returning. "Today we are not too busy to see you. Doctor Solo is available. Would you like to be seen?"

The girl didn't look his direction. Her brows lowered over her eyes, a funny little look of consternation which amused Ben, but she nodded anyway.

Well, good. Ben would have felt irresponsible letting such a vulnerable young woman walk back out that door in her condition. Some brute alpha would certainly be on her before the day was through.

"I can see you right away," he offered gently.

It didn't bother him to postpone the lake for her. He could still enjoy a late afternoon. A quick treatment now with orders to return tomorrow, and he could send her back into the world with a clear conscience, certain she'd be safe.

A brief look of hesitation flickered over her face, replaced quickly by steely resolve. She plopped a coin purse on the desk before Gwen. "I don't know how much treatment costs, but this is all I have. I hope it's enough."

Gwen glanced at Ben. He gave her a subtle nod. Whatever it was, it would be enough. If Ackbar were here, of course, that might not be the case. The old doctor wouldn't want Ben to accept anything less than their standard rate — the clientele they usually served moved in circles far above this poor girl's station. But Ben would help her. He wanted to.

Gwen counted out the contents of the coin purse. "This is sufficient," she lied. "Can I get your name for our books?"

"It's Rey," said the girl.

"Rey," Gwen repeated as she wrote it out in an elegant hand, etching it into their ledger. "Last name?"

The girl hesitated. "I don't have one. They just called me Summer."

Gwen paused. Ben learned his shoulder against the doorframe to the exam room, folding his arms over his chest. A foundling, then. Or rather, an unfound foundling. Had she been given the decency of being abandoned at a church, they would have at least given her the name of the church for her last name.

His pity mixed with a kind of academic fascination that, with truly no one to protect her, she had managed to make it all the way to this age without running into an opportunistic alpha.

The girl snuck a glance in his direction. She blushed when she saw him watching. Gwen asked for an address, and in a soft voice the girl gave it. As expected, the address pinned her directly in the heart of the lower class neighborhoods. Ackbar would have furious words to say when he went over their books next time. Ben wondered if it was worth it. He wondered why he so easily set aside everything else for this one girl.

"I think that's all we need, isn't it?" he said to Gwen.

She nodded. "It is. You can go ahead and follow Doctor Solo back, dear."

The girl, Rey, wrung her hands together nervously and turned, squaring her thin shoulders. Brave thing, obviously afraid but willing to face it anyway. Ben motioned for her to follow as he pivoted into the exam room.

"Doctor — Solo," she said, immediately tripping over his name as he closed the door behind her, "I don't need to be institutionalized."

Ben lifted a brow. "Institutionalized?"

"I know that's what your lot likes to do to to omegas like me when we're…" Her teeth flashed in a grimace and she shook her head. " _Sick._ But I don't need that. I can manage on my own. I'm not a threat to anyone."

"If you walk around the streets... _sick_...as you've put it, then you are, in fact, a threat." Ben strolled across the tastefully decorated room to the exam table. It was a padded thing, endowed with a fluffy pillow to aid the comfort of their patients. "Do you know the kind of riots you could cause, Miss Summer? The kind of violence? Alphas are brutes, Rey, no better than the animals when the madness comes upon them. Murders have happened over omegas like yourself."

"I know that," she said, her voice cold and hard like iron. Apparently she did not appreciate his explanation of how the world worked. Well, perhaps she was right to resent him. A young thing like her surviving on the streets for as long as she had, she almost certainly knew the grim reality of the bestial alpha better than the prim, protected omegas their clinic usually saw.

Rey didn't move from her position near the door. She perched on the balls of her feet, like she was ready to bolt. A flighty one, this girl. Ben saw it in the nervous twitch of her fingers, the way she angled herself in relation to the door. She reminded him of a rabbit, ever ready to dart away from the slightest indication of a predator.

"At least I know that better than some beta," she grumbled, then eyed him skeptically. "You don't smell like an alpha, doctor, but you definitely look like one. Why is that?"

Ben had never known. His parents were betas, though his mother often behaved like an alpha. His grandfather was an alpha, but it seemed he'd passed none of his hyper-fertility to either of his children. Ben was grateful for that. He was too big for a beta, but at least he didn't have the penchant for falling into shameful fits of licentiousness.

"Why are you an omega? This is what I was born to be. I have no say in the matter. But that is besides the point, madam. You said you needed help quite urgently. Perhaps we could begin here." He motioned again to the exam table.

She took a reluctant step forward, but then stopped herself. "You haven't given me any assurance that you won't send me to a convalescent institution."

Ben arched a brow. "You haven't given me any assurance as to why I should believe you when you claim you're no threat to society."

"You want to know why?" Her green eyes flashed with petulance. "I presented when I was twelve years old. And here I am at twenty, unclaimed, unspoiled except by a beta boy I loved when I was sixteen. No alpha has touched me, and no alpha will, until _I_ decide."

Ben didn't react to the shocking information. Twelve was _way too young_ to present. He pressed his mouth into a thin line and said flatly, "And how many are dead because some alpha tried to fight his way to you, however unsuccessful he was?"

At that, her mouth clamped shut. That's what he thought. Alphas were notoriously violent when they scented an omega in the throes of hysteria. Still, Ben wasn't sure this was the right approach to take with this girl. It didn't appear to persuade her even a step closer to his exam able, and much as he wanted to help her, he'd rather be on the lake if she just wanted to stand around resisting the help she sought.

He eased the reproach from his voice, gentling his tone. "Rey, did they tell you about what we do here at our clinic?"

"Yes," she said, eyeing him. "They said you can stop the...affliction before it begins."

"Exactly. We have ways of minimizing your symptoms and forestalling your hysteria. I do not want to send you to an institution. Do you believe me?"

"No."

"Then why did you come?" Again, he was careful to keep his tone gentle and non-confrontational.

She frowned, glanced at the door again, and let her shoulders slump. The way she wore her emotions on her sleeve was, well, perhaps not dignified but certainly charming. Ben appreciated the candor.

"Last time I got really close to doing something reckless. I was desperate. It seems to be getting worse. I don't want to go through that again."

Ben had several theories about why her condition could be worsening, mostly having to do with a body finally ready for the rigors of childbearing, her physical maturity at last catching up with her designation — but he chose not to offer these insights at this time. Something told him she wouldn't appreciate such an observation.

Normally Ackbar liked to handle the first-time patients himself. He had plenty of experience dealing with these nervous newcomers, and his slow, almost sleepy approach invariably put them at ease. Because of this, Ben mostly attended to the established regulars. Perhaps he didn't have the right touch, as it were, for Miss Rey Summer here. But he wanted to try.

"In my career, I have spent a turn working in omega asylums and convalescent institutions. While their efforts are, for the most part, sincere, I do not see such places as anything but a last resort. They are sometimes the only safety available to an omega in the throes of hysteria. Nevertheless, we've discovered that your lives are vastly improved by keeping you at home, in your routines, as much as possible. Fortunately, the medical community has discovered ways of delaying these fits of hysteria, and indeed we can temporarily cure the wildfires of an omega womb. With these methods, your visits to the asylums are minimized. I would prefer that approach with you today, versus sending you to an institution. Do you understand?"

She peered at him shrewdly. "Is that a very roundabout way of saying you don't approve of institutionalizing us?"

He chuckled. "I suppose it is, yes."

"And you really can make it stop? Without an alpha?"

"Not stop forever, but we can ease your symptoms and make you safer on the street."

At last she walked towards him, steps light enough that her shoes were almost silent across the floor until she came and stood by the exam table. "That's what I need," she told him. "Please do that."

Ben had every intention of doing just that, so long as she was willing to cooperate. This was good improvement. He patted the table. "Then let's get started. If you could get on the exam table, please, we'll begin by establishing your current symptoms."

With a lithe lift, she eased herself up and onto the table so that she sat on the side of it. This close, she smelled like fresh earth and lavender. Maybe she made her living selling flowers on the street. Many girls did exactly that to try and earn a living, however meager. But Ben wondered. That divine artist which made her had painted into this girl a streak of defiance, and something within the young doctor told him she would not settle for flowers, if she could help it.

Her eyes tracked him warily as he stepped around in front of her and lifted his hands, brushing his fingers against the skin under her jaw. He felt for her lymph nodes. They were not swollen.

"Do you feel feverish?" he asked softly, sliding one hand around the back of her neck, the other checking her forehead. Her skin burned like an ember beneath his touch.

She nodded.

He lightly grazed exploratory fingers over the glands on her neck, already pinking a shade brighter than the rest of her skin. The lightest touch against them made her shudder and exhale softly. Highly sensitive, he noted.

"Aches and pains?" he murmured, distracted by the way her eyes stayed on him, steady and intense.

"Yes," she said.

He manipulated her head carefully, tilting her head this way and that as he examined the flush of her cheeks, the faint sheen of perspiration beginning to gather along her forehead. He had her look at the ceiling, checking the whites of her eyes.

"Lethargy and fatigue?"

"Yes."

"Nausea?"

"That too."

His hands lingered perhaps a little longer than was strictly professional. He let them drop. "What else tells you this is different from another kind of illness?"

"Besides knowing my own body?" She said, eyes flashing.

He couldn't help the grin that tilted the corner of his mouth. "Yes, besides that."

"I have...distracted thoughts," she said. Her cheeks warmed again and she looked away from him at last. "Indecent thoughts. I won't repeat them to you."

"Of course not. That is a common symptom of hysteria. Lie back for me, please."

She did, swinging her legs up onto the table and easing her head back against the fluffy pillow. Another waft of lavender filled the air at this motion, prompting him to ask impulsively, "Do you sell flowers, Miss Summer?"

"No," she said. "Some of the others do, but not me."

"I'm going to feel for the location of your womb," he advised. "Just a little pressing. It shouldn't hurt."

She nodded and looked up at the ceiling.

Ben experienced a foreign twinge of anticipation, putting his fingers to her abdomen. She had a nice figure, true, but he was too disciplined for reactions like that. It made him frown.

"Tell me about the others," he said, to distract himself and her as he pressed firmly around the smooth plane of her lower abdomen, determining by palpitation alone just how firm her womb was.

"The other omegas who live in the safehouse," she offered.

Ben knew of one omega safehouse nearby. He didn't know the exact address, but guessed it would be near the location she gave Gwen. "Would that the the boarding house run by Maz?"

"That's the one," she said, glancing down at him in surprise. "Do you know her?"

"She's an old friend of my mother's." He held out his hand to her and helped her sit up again. "What is it that you do, Miss Summers?"

"I help Maz…" she paused, glancing at him as if to gauge his reaction. "We dress as men and build engines for automobiles."

Ben laughed. "Well, that's honest. And unexpected."

That seemed to coax a smile out of her at last. "You aren't scandalized."

"I'm plenty scandalized, Miss Summers," he chuckled. "But your affairs are your own. I'm not sure it's my place to judge you for it."

She cocked her head to the side and regarding him curiously. "Thank you."

He needed to get this back on track. Drawing in a deep breath, he returned to the matter at hand. "How do you manage your estrus?"

"Maz has a cellar beneath the boarding house. I lock myself in there. She puts a rug over the cellar door so no one knows."

Instant concern and horror swelled in the young doctor's breast. "You undergo the affliction by yourself? That must be excruciatingly difficult, and dangerous."

"Why dangerous? No alphas can get to me."

Ben cleared his throat. "Sometimes hysteria can lead to dehydration. Sometimes to permanent madness."

That made her sigh impatiently. "Well that's what I'm here for. So what do we do about it?"

"What do you know of hysteria, Miss Summer?"

"I know that's what your lot calls the affliction of my kind. Where I'm from? We call it heat."

Ben winced. "Indeed, that is the crass term for it. But humans are not dogs, Miss Summer, and we prefer to think of it in a more elevated way."

Her mouth twisted wryly. "Doesn't it amount to the same thing, though? In the animal kingdom, it's the season of breeding. That's all we want to do when we're going through it, so why isn't it accurate?"

"Because we are made in God's image," Ben said in a dry, unimpressed tone. This girl was the furthest thing from an animal. He didn't like to hear her compare herself to one. "So we speak of ourselves in a more elevated language than what we use for the beasts of the field."

Rey laughed. "Fine. Use your fancy words then. Tell me about my hysteria."

Ben cleared his throat and explained in the most professional, academic tone he could muster. "The omega estrus hysterical phenomenon is caused by an irritated, unfertilized womb and the imbalance of biles. These biles serve specific functions in the body, however, in both alphas and omegas, the elevated fertile conditions can cause certain biles to migrate to other places in the body and you become unbalanced. These cause the symptoms you're experiencing now. When the biles, or fluids, build up, they trigger a full hysterical meltdown in an omega. In an alpha, we call it mania."

"Fascinating," said Rey, and Ben was pretty sure she didn't find it fascinating at all. At least, not the way he had when learning of it in medical school.

"When alpha and omega come together, they can rebalance one another. The episode of hysterical estrus is eased by the calming properties found in alpha seminal fluid. The mania of an alpha is aided by complementary calming properties found in the womb secretions of an omega."

Rey made a face. "Please don't ever say _womb secretions_ agan."

Ben quickly moved on. "This can restore the biles to their proper places. In more barbaric times, I would have had no choice but to find you an alpha to soothe your distemper. But we are in a progressive age, Miss Rey, and with the new treatments, we can help unmated omegas such as yourselves live liberated lives, relatively pain-free."

He stepped away from her, retrieving the rolling, cart-like apparatus made specifically for the end of the exam table. It was a kind of short scaffold on which the patients could rest their legs, with curtains attached to preserve modesty. He arranged it in place, feeling the girls' eyes on him like hot coals. Warmth spread down his neck.

"Without treatment, and judging by your current symptoms, I'd estimate that you would likely succumb to full hysteria tonight."

"That's what I'd estimate as well," she said with this little sharp edge to her tone. Like she was mocking him.

He supposed that was fair. It was admittedly presumptuous of him to tell her of an event on the horizon with which she had already been wrestling for eight years. Twelve. It made him sick to think of someone so young plagued by something so awful.

"Does your hysteria typically fall around the time of the new moon?" he caught himself asking, and pressed his lips together to bite back the immediate apology that tried to jump out.

She gave him a funny look. "I've never paid attention to the moon, but they are very regular, right to the very day. Ever three months."

This made her a most unusual case, then, and Ben tingled with scientific excitement. Here before him was an outlier. He wondered if that helped her avoid unwanted alpha advances, beginning her hysterical estrus when alphas were in that latent period after their manias, which usually coincided with the majority of omega hysteria cases. Or on the other hand, he wondered if that made her life more dangerous, being one of the only omegas in miles to smell irresistible at a time when other omegas did not.

So much to discover here.

"You still haven't told me what the treatment is," she observed. "Does it hurt?"

"Difficult to say," Ben said thoughtfully. "It seems to cause some distress, but is always followed by immediate, profound relief. The treatment is manual stimulation of the nervous system. Using touch, I will coax your womb back into complacency and cause a release of those excess fluids. Afterwards, I will have you drink an herbal tincture which will forestall your symptoms until your next natural cycle."

A single brow arched. Her unguarded skepticism made him smile a little. Though a little prickly too, her honesty was refreshing. He wondered if she'd remark about the treatment method, but after a minute, her skepticism shifted into amusement.

She cocked her head and peered at him. "A beta who looks like an alpha, and provides the omega relief that an alpha does. Are you sure they got your designation right, doctor?"

He chuckled. "Quite sure. I do not possess that most vital element of alpha anatomy which ensures successful reproduction with an omega."

She blinked in surprise, and Ben felt his face warm, realizing he'd just indirectly referenced his own manhood in front of this young woman.

He cleared his throat and added hastily, "In any case, Miss Summer, you are mistaken. Our treatment is not comparable to the assistance rendered by an alpha companion."

Her mouth twisted in a little smirk, and she smoothed her dress over her legs in a surprisingly prim little gesture. "Alright then, Doctor Solo. What am I to do?"

"If you would please step behind that privacy curtain there," he said, motioning to the other side of the room where stood a tri-fold privacy screen, "and remove your undergarments from the waist down. You may leave you dress on, of course. When you're ready, please lie again on the table. I'll show you how to rest your legs here."

He patted the exam cart, touching lightly each of the leg rests.

Color crept up her cheeks again and her eyes widened. "You mean to touch me _there?_ "

"That is the treatment, yes."

"Hell's bells," she cursed softly under her breath, wide gaze drifting off to the side. Her cheeks were still flushed brighter than her oncoming hysteria warranted. "Nobody told me _that's_ what you do here."

Nevertheless, she slid off the table anyway and walked with those same quick, nervous steps over to the privacy curtain, shooting one last unconvinced look over her shoulder before disappearing behind it.

Ben turned and stepped over to Ackbar's desk. Next to it he kept a table, on which he kept a wash basin. Ben washed his hands carefully, slipping off his family's ring. He normally didn't wear it on work days, but he'd planned to be at the lake today instead of treating this peculiarly charming anomaly of an omega. He'd treated a variety of patients over the last year with Ackbar — he'd seen them in every shape and size — but he didn't think he'd ever encountered anyone quite so...pretty before. Pretty? Was that the right word?

This was dangerous ground here. He couldn't think about it for too long. Certainly some of his patients were strikingly beautiful, but he only acknowledged this as some distant, clinical observation in the back of his mind. Something about this foundling girl's face was different. It stayed in his thoughts like a sun-stain long after he'd looked away from her.

Not that it mattered. It _couldn't_ matter. He was here to do a job. Ben Solo did not become a doctor to get distracted by pretty faces.

Rey emerged again a moment later, looking the same as before — except she wasn't the same, and that knowledge sent a tingle down the back of Ben's neck. It unnerved him and he looked away as she climbed back onto the exam table. A fresh waft of lavender caught in his nose, clean and calming. _Why_ did she smell like that?

He stole one more quick glance to confirm that she was doing as he instructed, sliding her legs through the curtains of the privacy cart and resting them on her leg rests.

Such a good little thing. So trusting, even though she was so clearly unprepared for all this. Something within him warmed with what felt frighteningly like affection, so he hurried to squash it and all the accompanying thoughts about her trusting obedience.

"So what is it exactly you're going to do again?" she asked. "You said manual stimulation?"

"Think of it as a massage," he offered, selecting from the finest of his oils. Myrrh. Very expensive and imported across great distances. Normally rose oil would suffice, but he felt compelled to choose the very best today. Perhaps it was just pity — wanting to give this child of misfortune a small gesture of respect. Maybe he was motivated by something else. He didn't know, or care to analyze his actions as he lathered his hands in the exotic oil.

"A massage," she said dubiously. "Of that highly private area."

"A simple and harmless procedure," he reiterated, "to stimulate your nervous system and restore the balance."

Thus prepared, he turned and walked back over to her at last, his more oily hand held away from himself or anything else it might touch. "You need not be nervous, Miss Summer."

"You said it causes distress," she fired back quickly, that pucker between her brow growing more pronounced.

Ben took his place at the foot of the bed, on the other side of the curtained cart. He could see over it easily enough — it only came to his chest, after all. He hesitated before answering. "Distress is not the same as discomfort. The patients have never reported anything unpleasant about the treatment. Rather, they report the experience to be...invigorating. And agreeable."

"How long does it take?"

"That depends on how your body responds to the treatment. I cannot say."

She sighed, lifting her eyes to the ceiling and tilting her head back into the pillow. "Fine. Get on with it, then."

The corner of his mouth twitched into an appreciative half-smile. With his less oily hand, he pulled aside the privacy curtain on his end and rucked the simple folds of her dress up to her knees. She didn't have the layers and layers of starched and flounced muslin petticoats that he was used to dealing with. It was just a simple thing to carefully gather the fabric up to a workable length, exposing slim shins. Her skin was such a lovely color. Most ladies tried for a fair complexion, but this girl's skin glowed a warm olive tan. It reminded him of the Italian and Spanish girls he'd met on the occasional holiday, color kissed into their features by a warm, friendly sun.

He wanted to ask if she traveled, but then, considering her clothing and the little he knew of her, he thought that highly unlikely. Besides, conversation during this part of the treatment slowed the procedure through unnecessary distraction. It was better, Ackbar had once advised, to be silent and let the omega mind wander where it would during the treatment, to speed the process and purge any fluids that might be built up in the brain.

But Rey was very clearly nervous. A slight, almost imperceptible tremble shuddered through her legs beneath his fingertips, prompting him to give her gentle warning touches before he introduced his other hand. He placed a warm palm beneath her skirts, against the skin of her thigh.

A soft expulsion of breath stuttered out of her chest.

Heat radiated from beneath her skirt — and something else too. That scent. Lavender, like before, but richer and more nuanced. There were other notes, like jasmine, perhaps, or lemons. He took a breath to ask if she had perfumed herself before the appointment, because he'd never encountered such a thing in any other patient before, but he let the question die unasked because the logic of it defied him. This girl wouldn't be able to afford fragrances as expensive as jasmine, and if she could, why would she waste them here, between her legs where no one would smell them?

"Deep breath for me," he instructed, trying to concentrate despite the tantalizing scent that assailed him as he smoothed a hand up to her juncture and introduced the light touch of his oiled fingers through the seam of these southern feminine lips.

She jerked in surprise but said nothing, only a soft, plaintive noise stifled somewhere in the back of her throat. Ben quickly realized that the oil might not have been necessary. She was already providing generous lubrication of her own. This was not an _uncommon_ symptom of omegas this close to their estrus, but he'd never encountered so much of it before. When he gently parted her folds, smoothing a fingertip up and down in soft petting strokes, a sizable flood of it dripped down into the palm of his hand.

"Oh," she gasped, hips jerking.

"Are you uncomfortable?" He asked this, even though he knew she probably wasn't. No patient had ever complained or asked for him to stop. Still, it felt important for him to know — to hear from her that this was alright. That she liked it.

"No," she said shakily. "Please, keep — keep doing that."

He would. Deep within him, something twisted with satisfaction. Purely academic, of course. He enjoyed helping his patients find relief, that was all.

He slicked his soft pets up and down, sliding easily through the fluids flowing out of her, puddling beneath them. She sighed and arched her hips down to meet his fingers every time he skated up to her apex.

Ben glanced up. Normally he didn't. He tried to stay focused, to get it over with as quickly as possible before the cramping in his hand inevitably set in. But right now he wanted to see her face, to know the effects his treatments were having on her.

Rey's cheeks were flushed so bright, her eyes wide and glassy and staring up at the ceiling. Her lips trembled, slightly party, as stilted breaths struggled to find their way out of her chest.

The room felt stifling. It was supposed to be a mild day, so Ben wasn't sure why it felt so hot. He wondered if it had to do with the living furnace this omega girl was becoming. His fingers petting through her wet center felt as if they were soaked in molten metal. Still, he didn't pull away.

"Slight pressure, darling," he warned softly as he dipped the tip of one finger into the brightest, hottest spot in her cleft, just barely breeching her as his thumb came to rest lightly atop the bundle of nerves that he already knew produced the greatest results.

This wasn't standard. Normally they did not penetrate their patients digitally, focusing only the exterior vestibule. Ben wasn't sure why he did it, except that he believed she wanted it, and he wanted to do it.

Academic curiosity, perhaps?

But oh, she felt so nice and soft there, silky and blazing hot.

" _Alpha,_ " she whimpered, more slick flowing out of her as she arched wantonly. Her eyes, which must have closed at some point, flew open suddenly and she lifted her head. "Oh, doctor, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know you're not—"

"Perfectly alright," he told her quickly. He didn't want her to be embarrassed about that. He wanted her to feel free to...do it again. "It's a normal reaction. No need to be ashamed. I don't mind."

Gently, gently, he hooked his finger deeper into her, assessing the stricture of her walls. She was very tight. With one finger along he felt her muscles clutching at him, trying to determine how best to spread for him. Their grip and flutter sent a swooping sensation right through his middle, and between his legs came a distinct throb.

It startled him enough that he paused in his ministrations momentarily. The girl didn't notice right away, hips tilting into his hand, pressing herself against his thumb in an unconscious bid for more stimulation.

Jasmine and lemons and lavender swirled around him, through him, assailing him in a fresh burst so strong he could almost _taste_ it. His mouth watered and his stomach burned and somewhere low in his groin, he ached. The effect was so powerful that his free hand lashed out, clutching at the cart to steady himself. Nothing had ever smelled so unbearably tempting before, and he couldn't help the tight, throbbing, engorging sensation happening below his belt.

"More, Alpha" Rey pleaded, eyes rolling shut again.

Ben swallowed hard, unable to stem the tide of saliva pooling under his tongue. He swirled his thumb in a slow circle, dragging over that bundle of nerves, trying to focus on the procedure at hand and not the rousing event in his pants.

He didn't _do this_. He _never_ did this. Becoming aroused by a patient, an omega hours away from the most vulnerable time of her life — that was for lesser men. For quacks and charlatans and lowlifes who sought to take advantage. Not him. Ben was disciplined. He was professional. He had never been thought about what he did for his patients as anything sexual.

But he couldn't stop _watching_ her. How she trembled and writhed, arching her head back into the pillow, her hands clutching the edge of the table, knuckles turning white. That violent flush of color over her cheeks was so pretty. The way she turned her head to the side, bearing her neck and her pink glands to him, breathing little whimpers and moans of _alpha_ and _please_. Calling for more relief than he could provide. Those glands. Irritated and swelling, more pronounced now than when she walked in. He remembered when he touched them. How she shivered. How lavender and jasmine hung delicately in the air.

His stomach clenched tight again and a sort of desperation gathered at the back of his neck, to be what she needed. To help her. To ease the suffering that would come if her hysteria was allowed to progress. He stepped a little closer to the cart, dipping his other hand under her skirt again to caress her thigh while he gently and slowly worked a second finger into her tight passage, continuing the methodical rhythm at her apex. She wouldn't be long to her paroxysm, he saw. Tears were gathering in her eyes.

"Tell me what you feel," he urged, and wasn't sure why he said it. That wasn't part of the treatment. But he needed it. He needed her words. He needed to know what she needed.

"Alone," she said, breath hitching on a sob. "Oh _god_ it feels good, Alpha. It's so good. Please don't send me away. Knot me. Keep me."

Heat raced through his veins, up his neck. Alone. She shouldn't feel alone. He didn't want her to be alone anymore.

"You couldn't take a knot," he said softly, pushing his two soaked fingers into her again. "You're too tight."

"No," she protested, head thrashing from side to side. "I'd be good. I could do it. For you, Alpha, I could do it."

Helpless and desperate, Ben's movements got rougher. He couldn't accommodate her needs, and it killed him. He'd never felt so much anguish. The emotion surged, disproportionate to the situation. He couldn't accommodate her because he did not possess that piece of anatomy, but more importantly — and he thing he needed to keep in mind — was that the very desire to do that for her was immoral, unethical, and inappropriate. She didn't come here for that.

But if he _did_ have the anatomy for it…

A wet squelch earned him another rush of slick, another burst of scent, and darkness curled inside him like black smoke. If he _did_ have the knot, he'd do it. Ethics be damned, he'd shove this insipid cart aside and bury every inch of himself inside her heat, wedge himself in and get lodged there, inseparable by any earthly power. She could never leave, no one could ever take her. He'd live inside her body and pump his seed into her. He'd suck on those pink glands, so bright and irritated and in need of a mouth to soothe them, until she begged for his teeth. And then he'd bite. He'd taste her sweet jasmine blood on his tongue. He'd keep her, safe and wanted and satisfied forever. _His_.

Ben blinked, pulling his hand back from her in a panicked jerk. He stared at it like it had been scalded. His hand glistened with her slick, sticky and viscous and so heavily imbued with scent he could taste it on the roof of his mouth.

 _Taste it_ , a voice inside him urged.

"What happened?" Rey panted, leaning up on her elbows. "Doctor, what happened? I could feel it. I was almost there."

Ben shook his head. He couldn't speak. His pants were painfully tight with no room for his rock hard member to go, and the way it _throbbed_. Like nothing he'd ever felt. He wanted to touch it. To get relief. To make sure it was okay because it did _not feel okay_. His stomach roiled with nausea, like hot coals sat deep in his belly and burned his whole body from the inside.

"Doctor?" Rey said again, her voice gone soft. Her chest still rose and fell in soft pants, but she sat up, brow creasing in concern. "Your eyes."

"I'm— sorry—" he managed to wrench out, stumbling backwards, away from the cart. Her essence still lingered on his fingers, on his skin, taunting him, scalding him. Calling him. _Taste. Taste. Taste._ That voice was so familiar and so foreign, not really a voice but more an urge coming from some untapped place inside him. His head rang with a faint buzzing sound, her scent settled over his brain like heavy fog.

He couldn't escape it, this desperation and hunger rising up with the heat of those coals in his stomach. It all centered around her. Around this girl and her slick and her glands and that bright, intelligent perplexed gleam in her lovely gray-green eyes. Around her mouth. Oh so kissable. He wanted that mouth, and those eyes, and those glands, and that slick. He wanted it all.

 _Omega_ , some deep animal thing within him purred.

The door to the exam room burst open suddenly and Gwendolyn darkened the doorway, blue eyes wide. She took one look at Ben and dashed over to Rey, pulling her swiftly off the table and setting her on her feet.

No, _no,_ that wasn't right. Ben lunged towards them, but Gwendolyn was faster, putting the girl behind her and slamming her hands into Ben's chest to hold him back.

"Doctor Solo," she snarled. "Stop."

"Mine," he heard himself snarl in a voice that was not his own.

Gwen was in his way. That omega was _his_. He burned alive with a consuming need to possess, to claim, to own, to take. He needed to put his aching cock into something soft and hot and wet, and he needed to make his omega feel all better.

"Miss Summer, get out of here," Gwen said urgently.

Rey's fingers were on Gwen's arm. They didn't belong there. They belonged on _his_ arm. She peeked around Gwen, her eyes meeting his. She didn't look scared. Of course she didn't.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked Gwen softly. "He didn't smell like that before."

"He has never smelled like that," Gwen agreed. "You need to go. Now."

"But I think I should help hi—"

"I said **Go.** " The alpha command lanced through the air like a thunderclap. Ben was instantly incensed. How _dare_ she command his omega?

Rey jerked back, eyes widening, and then immediately fled. She darted across the room and out the door. Ben moved to follow, but Gwen blocked him, wrapping her arms tight around him and wrestling him to the floor.

They clamored, rolling and shoving and scrabbling. Ben Solo from an hour ago would have been appalled to find himself wrestling a woman and respected associate on the floor of the exam room, but right now he didn't care who she was. He retained enough sense to know that he didn't want to hurt her, yet everything else was subsumed in this panicked, blinding need to follow the omega. This obnoxious female alpha was in his way.

Fucking _alphas_ , always thinking they're the strongest in any room, like they've the right to own any and every situation. Who was she to stop him? And why? Did she want the girl for her own? She already had someone. That tall ginger dandy. She didn't need two omegas for her own. Ben hated them. Alphas and their mindless, bestial need to—

Ben froze. Pinned beneath Gwen's strong hands, he blinked up at her as horror washed over him in an icy wave.

"Gwen?"

She was glaring down at him, blue eyes hard as ice chips.

"What — what's happening to me?" he asked hoarsely.

"In my professional opinion?" she said mockingly. She gave a sniff, winced, and then her voice dropped deadly serious. "You're in rut."

Rut.

That crude, vulgar word for alpha mania.

Ben hadn't studied mania as closely as hysteria, but he knew enough. Everyone knew enough. Alphas in rut were dangerous. They were menaces to society. And while omegas got to suffer their fits of hysteria in convalescent institutions and sanatoriums, alphas went to prison until their blood cooled again. They could be incarcerated permanently if they made themselves a public danger more than once.

Medical treatment for alphas on the cusp of mania still consisted of good strong chains and an isolated place to keep them until it passed — and plenty of liquids to keep them hydrated. The advancements made to help omegas had largely ignored the out of control nature of the alpha.

Because omegas were unfortunate victims. Alphas were deplorable menaces.

Ben had always been grateful that the divine hand had spared him that designation. It gave him liberty to pursue his studies and become a doctor. Alphas couldn't do things like that. They were unstable. Unmated alphas were only allowed employment of the physically demanding kind. Their size and strength lent them well to hard labor. Besides, exhausting them had the fortunate effect of reducing the frequency of their manic episodes.

Mated alphas like Gwen had more liberties. They could find other means of employment, no longer considered threats to society.

Ben wasn't one of them. He wasn't.

"I'm...a beta…" he said feebly after all this had flashed through his frantic mind. He felt feverish and raw and wild. The scent of the omega still hung on his tongue like a drug. Gwen's scent agitated him. It was strong and dominant and threatening. Competition, that scent said.

"Apparently not anymore," Gwen said. "You reek, Solo. We need to find Doctor Ackbar."

Ackbar. No.

Ben shoved hard, heaving her off him and scrambling to his feet. He intended to bolt for the door, but Gwen's big hand wrapped around his ankle and she dragged him right back down to the ground the moment he tried to step.

"Stop it, doctor," she demanded, pinning him down with her knees on his back. "They're going to lock you up if you can't control yourself. Think what that would do to your reputation."

Reputation? Ben struggled to find any meaning in the word. His blood felt like fire, and he knew the only way to cool it was to find the omega he'd just been knuckle-deep inside.

"Do you want to go to prison? Control yourself," Gwen said again.

"I'm in control," he huffed, her weight pressing the breath out of his lungs. "I'm in control."

"No you're not."

"No, I'm not. Fucking hell, Gwen, what is happening to me?" A flash of fear blinded his need for the briefest moment, realization that she was right. That he could go to prison. That he was not himself and didn't know how to _be_ himself again.

"We'll get to the bottom of this, Solo," she said. "I promise. In the meantime, go back upstairs to your room. I'm going to bar the door so you can't get out. I'll fetch Ackbar from the symposium."

Ben shuddered. "I think you might have to make sure I make it to my room."

"I will."


	2. Chapter 2

Pain.

That's all that the once proud and composed Ben Solo had become.

A living torch of fire and pain.

The pain was foremost physical. It cracked through every bone and smoldered in every joint, like his body wasn't capable of containing so much _need_. He was being torn apart. His head pounded and his muscles strained, every ounce of him ready to run or pounce or kill or breed.

But the pain was deeper than the body too. It racked him with shame and anger and confusion and grief and fear. He'd never felt this way before, his heart pounding so hard he thought that surely he was about to die. And it frightened him, this terrible hunger. He'd never been so out of control in his life. He didn't want to be an alpha, and in those fearful stabs of lucidity, he quaked with the dread that they would come haul him off to prison until he got control, and then his job would be gone, and they'd send him straight to some dock to join those mindless grunt workers unloading ships. He felt shame too. Shame that his higher thought had given way to the most obscene thoughts any man had ever entertained. Shame that he had become just as animalistic and those other alphas he'd always derided.

And these drove him to rage. A rage that was bigger than his body. It compelled him to tear his room apart as effectively as the condition of his body tore his own form limb from limb. With muscles trying to burst through his skin, he ripped the linens and mattress from is bed, and the books from his desk, upending the whole thing in a shower of cracking wood. He tried to tear the door off its hinges, but whatever means Gwen had used to seal him in had been unyieldingly effective.

A darkness yawned wide inside him, demanding and devouring.

Because above all, more than the shame or fear or anger, he felt hunger.

 _Take her,_ the darkness demanded. _It's your right. It's your destiny. She's yours. She knows it, too. She's waiting for you. She's in pain. You didn't help her. She's ready, and she needs you. Knot her. Seed her. Bite her._

Frantic for relief, he shoved his pants down to his ankles and cried out when his fingers met his furious cock. It was flushed red, harder and bigger than ever before, straining to his navel, his shaft so sensitive that tears sprang to his eyes. The pressure was unbearable. If he could tear the whole member from is body and fling it away from him, he'd do it. He couldn't look at it. When he did, he saw the telltale thickening near the base, an area that had never engorged before starting to pulse and swell, aching to be buried somewhere snug and warm.

He bit into the side of his arm while he gingerly worked himself, fighting through waves of pain and pleasure that were all woefully inadequate.

The worst part was knowing she was so close. _His omega_. She was ripe and ready and needed him as much as he needed her. She was going to suffer. She'd already suffered before, and she didn't need anymore of it.

They could help each other.

Ben tore his hand away from his cock and pulled his pants back up, his mind zeroing in on a single understanding.

He couldn't stay here.

He had to find her.

* * *

The window glass bit into his palms when he landed, digging little shards deep into his flesh. He didn't care. Night had fallen, and Ben Solo, beta-no-more _burned_.

Ackbar had gone just moments ago. Ben had managed to make himself wait until the older doctor arrived and took a sample of blood. This was only gained because Ben was fixated on finding his omega, instead of tearing the head off this man with a needle. Despite Gwen's insistence, Ackbar had been reluctant to confirm a diagnosis of mania. He said it was simply impossible for one as old as Ben to present. He said it was more likely a brain fever. He administered antibiotics and told Ben to sleep. Gwen protested and explained what she smelled and the glands starting to emerge under Ben's skin, but Ackbar said it was unheard of for any beta to present after adolescence. He documented Ben's condition and said he would consult his library for a logical explanation.

Ben didn't care what the old fool did, as long as he left him alone and unchained. That was important. Gwen had taken one look at Ben's destroyed room and advised the restraints. Ackbar didn't think it necessary. For the first time in his career, Ben was grateful for the physician's stubborn inability to conceive of the unexpected.

After they went away again, it was a simple thing to break the window with one of the busted legs of his desk.

Ben didn't even care about the blood on his hands or the sharp pain that lanced through his feet when he dropped from the second story. Somewhere deep behind the hunger that consumed him, the faint voice of his more clinical mind wondered if he'd suffered from damage to the bones of his feet. But that side of him was too lost to hold much sway. Lost to this demon, this beast, this devouring need.

Clinical assessment and self-disgust could not stop him from sprinting down the quiet street like the devil was on his heels, flying from puddled lantern light to puddled lantern light. He ran through the finer neighborhoods, heedless of anything that wasn't navigating out of these respectable streets and finding his way towards cheapside. He knew she'd be there. The address she'd given Gwen surfaced in his predatory mind, hazy and indefinite but enough to guide him.

His senses surged to new heights — especially his sense of smell. Ben became aware of information he'd never possessed before. Omegas and alphas all around him. A veritable swamp of scents, mixed and muddled, making him sick with their acrid emotions or unfiltered needs.

It got worse when he got into the poor side of town. Thick, heavy alpha and omega scent assaulted him, particularly pungent with all those who could not afford the tinctures and tonics that subdued wealthier demihuman scent. He caught wafts of needy, lonely omegas — not hysterical but vulnerable nonetheless. Another time, Ben might have worried for them. He might have tried to find them all and get them to a safe place, perhaps, or given them all tinctures to waylay their estrus when they next expected them.

But tonight was not that night.

He cared for none of them. Their briney scents offended him, holding none of the charm or comfort or intoxicating sensuality of _his_ omega. She was here somewhere, on the cusp of falling into physical torment. She needed him.

He would burn down all of cheapside if it brought her to him.

"Rey!" he bellowed when he got close to Maz Kanata's boarding house. The night was so dark. No street lamps illuminated this stretch of the city, and the moon had turned her face away. He stared up at the windows of the boarding house, softly glowing like dying embers in the night. "Rey Summer!"

A few of the windows opened, curious heads poking out. He could smell her, but he couldn't see her. Lavender swirled into the soup of scents, but wrong too — a little bitter, a little sharp. She suffered.

"Omega!" He roared, pacing back and forth before the boarding house, outraged that his girl was hurting and he didn't know how to find her, and eyes he did not want were on him now. He heard other doors and windows opening as the denizens of the street responded to his shouts.

Was she already in her cellar? He strode quickly to the door of the boarding house. She told him her secret. She hid in the cellar, the door to which lay concealed beneath a rug. He'd shred every rug with his bear hands until he found her and rescued her from her dungeon.

Before he could reach the house, however, strong hands seized him from behind, and he whirled.

Gwen. _Damn her._ And someone else too — another alpha. This one wore a mating bite and a constable's uniform. They were both panting hard, like they'd been running. The constable's grip on Ben's collar tightened.

"You're in rut," he said darkly. "You can't be here."

Ben tried to wrench free. "Rey!" he shouted over his shoulder.

"Come on, mate. She's not for you. You can burn it off in a cell. It'll all be over soon."

Ben thrashed like a man possessed.

Gwen's brow creased in concern. "I'm sorry. I had to. When we heard the glass break — stop it, doctor, please."

More spectators were gathering in doorways and windows. None of them were Rey. Ben wanted to scream. Her scent was here, but there were too many people. He had to find the cellar. He had to pluck her out of this unworthy crowd.

Another figure came stumbling out of the darkness, into the light now flooding out from the open boarding house door. The old doctor looked as if he were about to expire, breathing so hard his bushy mutton chops trembled like aspen trees. He lifted shaky hands.

"W-wait, Officer Dameron. P-please. This is my colleague. He doesn't need to go to prison. We can — we can help him ourselves."

The constable leaned forward and gave Ben a conspicuous sniff, grimacing. "He's manic, doctor. A strong one too. He's already too far gone for your help. He's a danger, and I must remove him."

"He's — I'm — studying him. It's important research. We'll just take him back to the clinic. He'll be properly restrained, I promise," Ackbar struggled to say. "It's an unprecedented case. We must observe him so we can—"

Ben had managed to wrestle himself free of Dameron and Gwen. He swung, fist connecting hard with the constable's jaw and sending him reeling backwards. Free of his captors, he turned and bolted again for the boarding house. The door was open, figures huddled in the doorway. He wouldn't even have to break it down. He could just shoulder them aside and find the rug and extract Rey and take her somewhere nice and private.

Gwen scrambled after him, fingers brushing the back of his shirt as she struggled to get purchase. Ben managed to stay one step ahead of her until—

He stopped short, slamming hard into a wall of scent. Lavender, jasmine, lemons, and bright, urgent need. Of _her_.

She came pushing through the omegas gathered in the doorway, stumbling out into the night in only a shift, already soaked in sweat. Hair down, feet bare, eyes wide. She was so beautiful. Ben gaped as his whole soul moved with the sight of her. Drowning in her scent, struck by her beauty, overwhelmed by the waves of relief and need he could feel in her. She was everything. The most important person in the world.

He would protect her with his life.

Gwen wrenched his arms behind his back and locked her own behind his head.

"Wait!" Rey cried, running towards them. A tiny old alpha woman came darting out after her. The smallest alpha in existence, maybe.

"Keep him away from her," Maz said acidly. "Get him out of here."

"No, wait," Rey said again, and her voice jolted through Ben like an injection of laudanum. His chest heaved and he leaned towards her, even as Gwen held him back. His attention fixated on her face, painted in a subtle sheen of sweat in the lackluster lamplight. On her mouth, and whatever words she wanted to spill into the air.

"Don't hurt him," she pleaded, tripping forward on those ridiculously light feet of hers, wincing and wrapping an arm around her middle. She flitted right past Ben and Gwen in a waft of heavy, urgent scent, putting herself between them and the constable, now recovering from his sucker punch. "Please, I can help him."

Ben thrashed against Gwen's firm hold, desperate to turn around, to keep this omega in his sight. To her credit, Gwen obliged him by calmly pivoting them both.

This close, Rey smelled heavily of heat. It made Ben's head spin and his cock throb, but more importantly, it made his animal self clench with jealous fear. Everyone could scent her out here. She wasn't safe. All these people, all these eyes. There were alphas here, not just Gwen and the constable, but others. In the buildings, in the streets. They would come for her. Ben would have to kill them all.

"Miss Summer," the constable objected, cupping his jaw and rolling it experimentally. The skin already looked red and swollen. "You can't be serious."

"Poe," she said softly.

She knew him. Ben's omega knew this ridiculous alpha. It made him seethe. It made him want to howl. It made him want to pop his arms out of his sockets to get out of Gwen's grasp and bash the constable's face into the ground until his brains watered the dirt.

Doctor Ackbar straightened, peering at her with a curious look behind thick spectacles that magnified his wide-set eyes. "You're the omega," he said softly. "The one our poor Doctor Solo treated today."

"Yes," she said with a little gasp, her shoulders hunching. Ben could feel her pain as if it were his own. A low whine escaped him and he tugged fruitlessly against Gwen.

"Fascinating," said Ackbar with genuine interest. "He entered the room a man designated beta, and emerged with all the impulse and violence of an alpha. You did that to him, somehow. An omega who can spark mania in betas? How is this possible?"

"She did what now?" the constable asked sharply.

"I don't know what happened," said Rey. "But please, let me help him."

"Child, no," objected Maz. She threw a fierce look at Ben. "You can't see him through this. You're not safe right now. You're not thinking clearly. Trust me, I know his family. You don't want this."

Rey ignored her, turning around to face Ben. He jerked against Gwen's restrain yet again, desperate to hold her, to show her that he wouldn't let any of his flames touch her. He'd be sweet and kind and anything she needed. He'd show her what it was to feel loved. He'd _love_ her. He'd bite her and keep her safe and happy forever, and any dream she wanted to chase, he'd cheer her on. The world could be wide open to them. He'd open it himself, for her.

If only everyone else would just disappear and let them be.

She stepped towards him, lifting a trembling hand. His eyes bounced from her face to her fingers, jaw slackening as he caught sight of the little pink gland on her wrist, swollen and puffy. He wanted to set his tongue against it, to lap at the spot until she only smelled like him. Instead he sucked desperate lungfuls of air, drinking deeply the drug of her scent. She needed him as much as he needed her.

Her fingers met his face, brushing his cheek, cupping the side of his jaw as she moved in even closer. Ben's world narrowed to a pinprick, everything that wasn't her falling away into nothing. Her hand was hot on his cheek.

"I called you 'alpha,' and you answered. You're here. For me," she whispered. "My whole life I've been waiting for someone to come for me. You did."

"For you," he agreed in a struggling gasp. Words were difficult, but he wanted her to have them. "Only you."

He hadn't presented when he should have. Maybe because she wasn't there. He knew that if he hadn't met her, he'd have gone his whole life without presenting. Only she could call forth his sleeping alpha. She was the only one for whom he'd wake.

She gently pushed his face to the side and brushed a thumb over a sensitive spot near the base of his neck, where it dipped into his shoulder. His knees buckled and if it hadn't been for the mountain of a woman holding him up from behind, he might have collapsed. A conflicted flood of comfort and lust rocketed down his veins from that single touch, like his heart might explode with relief having her skin against it like that, or like his body might burst into living flames from so much denied need.

Flames. Like her. She was burning too. He could soothe her.

"You didn't have this before," she observed with a little, labored smile. She pressed against the gland again, pulling a whisper-soft groan from his lips. Her eyes flicked back to his. "You also didn't finish what you started. And now look at me."

"I'll finish it," he promised urgently. "I'll help you. I can make it better. I'll do anything. If you'll have me."

She let her hand fall away from him as she turned back to the others. "He's mine," she decided.

"You can't just say that and make everything better, Miss Summer," Dameron said incredulously. "First of all, you're in no condition to make such decisions. You ought to be in a convalescent institution right now or we're going to have a riot on our hands. And second of all, this brute assaulted an officer of the law. He's going to jail."

"I'll pay his fine," Ackbar offered quickly. "And we'll move fast. We'll go back to the clinic. They won't be a danger to anyone else there."

"You want them to do this?" Dameron's expression said he couldn't believe any of this was truly happening.

"As far as the law is concerned, a willing omega and a willing alpha have found one another. Their mania and hysteria will be well contained between each other. The threat to decent society is eliminated in their discovery of one another. And I should like to see this most unusual case through to its ultimate conclusion," Ackbar said.

"Rey," Maz pleaded again. "Please, you're not in your right mind."

"I still have enough of my wits about me yet," Rey said sharply. Then, hesitating and pressing a hand gingerly against her abdomen, she admitted, "though it doesn't feel as if I'll have them for long."

Ben's inner beast recognized that stillness was working in his favor, and so he said nothing. If he was quiet and careful, they might listen to her. A low rumble tumbled through his chest, dark and possessive. Her hysteria was his alone to treat. And the treatment would involve the oldest remedy in the world.

* * *

Ackbar and Gwen escorted the pair back to the clinic. Gwen didn't let go of Ben even once, marching him through the dark streets with his arms still locked behind his body. Her strength was incredible. Ben didn't like it. He knew this position put him at a disadvantage if Rey's powerful scent drew anyone else out of their houses.

"Don't worry," Gwen said, reading the jealousy in his scent with practiced ease. "With you smelling like you do, nobody's going to come within ten feet of that girl."

The predatory animal in Ben's chest curled in tall mental grasses, waiting patiently with its prey in sight. Now that he knew he could have her, his desperation fell to a simmer. The tension and hunger and need threaded into his muscles like cords of steel still tormented him, his stomach still hurt and his head still pounded, but he could muster the patience to wait for the right moment to take his omega.

Rey walked ahead of them beside Ackbar. They talked, discussing the events of the morning. Strong omega. Even though her shoulders were high with stress and she kept a hand firmly pressed against her middle, she managed to walk and talk as if she were not rapidly descending into heat.

Ben couldn't focus on what she was saying. His eyes trailed over the round backside of her shift, pulling air into his lungs to fill his head with her scent. He knew what her legs looked like under that fabric. What her soft, tight insides felt like. What her slick smelled like on his fingers. He'd taste it this time.

"You reek," Gwen muttered behind him. "Anyone within three miles of the clinic is going to know there's an alpha in rut in there. Ackbar is jeopardizing his business to help you."

Ben didn't acknowledge what she said, but it bounced around his mind in violent ricochet. He didn't like it anymore than Gwen did, though his motives were more clouded than perhaps they should be. If he had anywhere else to take her, to whisk his omega off somewhere soft and private and remote, he would. But his parents' house was two hours away by train, and he couldn't wait two hours. She didn't have two hours. He lived in the clinic house with Ackbar, and she lived in a boarding house. Of the two, his was the most private.

"Be careful with her," Gwen added after another block. A tone of menace had crept into her voice. "Your omega is your world. Don't hurt her."

Ben's hackles raised at the very _idea_ that he would hurt her. Anger made the predator inside him churn restlessly within its hiding place. And perhaps it spiked his scent, because Rey glanced over her shoulder with a concerned look.

"You didn't like that, did you?" Gwen chuckled. "Good. If you do anything to that girl that she does not want, I'll destroy you, doctor. I can do it. You've seen that I can. And it's a promise. You are not an animal. You will control your impulses for her sake."

Ben watched the sway of Rey's hips, subtly swelling out from a narrow waist. He stared at her hair, long and loose and utterly immodest for a young woman out in public — even during the night. But then, she wasn't the least bit modest right now, in a sweat-soaked shift that clung to her superheated body, and bare of foot.

That made him start with realization. She wasn't wearing _shoes_. And these streets were vile. Filthy. Deplorable. He stopped so abruptly, Gwen stumbled into the back of him, head lightly thunking against his.

"What the devil are you doing?" she demanded.

He wrestled against her hold, toeing a heel off one shoe and kicking it down the street towards the pair ahead. It clattered and skittered over the ground next to Rey, who paused in her step to glance down at it. He repeated the performance with the other.

She glanced back at him.

"Please wear them," he asked, nauseated and achy at the idea of his tiny omega continuing barefoot over these rough dirty roads. The cobblestones of cheapside were uneven and painful on Ben's already injured soles, but he was more interested in seeing her safely back to the clinic than he was cataloguing all the way his bones hurt.

Ackbar observed the interaction with an expression of curiosity. Rey bent down and righted the shoes, slipping her feet neatly into them. They were _enormous_ on her. Laughably huge. She lifted a foot and rattled it loosely over her feet. That delightfully kissable mouth of hers spread into a huge grin, and Ben's heart (and cock) throbbed at the sight of it. He wanted to snatch that grin into his own mouth and taste the flavor of her happiness. He wanted to trace the shape of her smile with his fingers as he mapped the rest of her too.

"Thank you," she told him, her voice honey-sweet through his blood.

 _Mate her_ , his hindbrain begged.

 _Soon,_ he agreed.

In his chest burned a bonfire of pride all the way back to the clinic, watching his omega wear his shoes. It got easier to walk once they passed into the more respectable neighborhoods where the streets were paved with smooth brick setts instead of rough stone. He enjoyed hearing the heavy clod of the too-loose shoes knocking the setts with every footstep.

"Here we are, my dear," Ackbar said kindly, unlocking the door and pushing it open for Rey to enter. "I will put a notice on my door deferring my patients to Saint Agnes hospital for the time being. I'm trying to train some students there on the treatment of omega hysteria anyway, and it will be good practice for them. And I will stay with my sister for a few days so you may have the house to yourself."

"Thank you," Rey said softly, following him into the illuminated interior.

"Before I go, though, do you mind if I do a quick cursory exam?" Ackbar said amiably. "I'm desperately curious to discover any divergence you have from the standard omega population. Perhaps it will shed some light on what happened today."

"You aren't worried you'll spontaneously present too?" Rey asked.

Ackbar rubbed his chin between his two bushy chops. "I am well enough too old for that sort of thing. Of course, Doctor Solo should have been as well, but he is much younger than I am. I think I should like to take a look at any rate."

"Very well," Rey said. "Though I warn you...it can't be long. I don't feel well."

"Of course not. Very quick, I assure you."

Gwen knocked the door of the clinic closed behind them, directing Ben over to one of the padded waiting benches. She forced him to sit as Ackbar and Rey disappeared into the exam room. When that door shut, Gwen finally released him.

Ben's arms ached. But then, all of him ached. He rolled his shoulders and his neck, flexing his fingers, his extremities tingling as sensation returned. His eyes darted towards the parlor.

"I wouldn't advise it, Doctor," Gwen menaced.

Ben regarded her warily and wondered why it was that she didn't provoke his wrath the way that constable did. Certainly he found her a nuisance and an impediment between himself and what he wanted, but he didn't have the urge to paint the walls in her blood. Maybe because he knew her before all this mess. Maybe because this alpha female had proven herself an even match for his strength, and thus he felt no urge to assert his dominance.

He didn't really understand anything about his own urges or instincts right now. It was too exhausting to try to surface long enough to analyze them. Easier to just lie back and let them wash over him.

If he ever managed to claw back a brief splinter of sobriety, he cringed at himself. He couldn't be this barbaric. This unhinged. He couldn't have so quickly become a thrall to baser instincts, no better than a rabid cur.

"You hate yourself," Gwen observed with a nod. "I know. I feel it too. It's normal for our kind. You will hate yourself more on the other side of this, when it's over and your wits fully return and you are ashamed of how far you fell. But you cannot change who you are. In time, you'll learn to live with it."

"How?" Ben asked, staring at the door to the parlor.

But just as Gwen drew breath to answer, the air stirred with a _strong_ surge of jasmine, of _Rey, and need, and now,_ and suddenly Ben was on his feet, shoving past her so quickly she didn't have time to grab him. He barreled across the parlor and burst through the exam door.

Ackbar wasn't by Rey on the exam table. He was by his desk, marking a little vial of collected slick. Rey was doubled over on her side in the fetal position on the table, cringing in pain.

Blood pounded in Ben's ears. He seized Ackbar by the shoulders and hauled the old man backwards, shoving him into Gwen in the doorway and slamming the door shut in their faces. He seized a heavy chest of drawers containing all manner of medicines and vials and dragged it in front of the door.

"Go away," he snarled through the dense timber before turning.

The _tyger tyger burning bright_ stirred inside him, in his stomach, in his groin. His feverish skin pebbled with goosebumps beneath his shirt as chills of anticipation rolled through him. He was sweaty and desperate and ready.

But his agony hardly mattered. More important was that his omega hurt.

"Alpha," she pleaded, lifting her head, eyes flying open.

She didn't look at him with fear or trepidation. Why was she not afraid? _Ben_ was afraid. Of himself. Of what he could do, of the things he _wanted_ to do. And he was afraid of her and the expectations she might have. He didn't know the first thing about being an alpha. He was running on pure instinct here, and nothing else. Was he supposed to take care of her? And how? And what was the protocol on biting? Did she expect it? Did she expect him to refrain from doing it?

 _No,_ the voice inside him protested, hunger for her flesh between his teeth overwhelming him.

There was a whole world here, and until today, he had merely been a distant scientist thereof. Now he was part of it, as disoriented as a traveler disembarking in the furthest, most primitive corner of the planet.

"Alpha, please," she whimpered.

She still had on his ridiculously huge shoes, the toes of which just barely peeked out of one side of the privacy cart. Nothing about her was sensible. Not her attire or footwear or even her presence here. She didn't know him. She didn't know if he was a safe person to trust. Yet she hadn't come here prepared for anything but the depraved machinations running through Ben's pyretic thoughts, and that knowledge nearly drove him to his knees with lust.

"Come," she pled again. "Come here."

He was still somehow frozen across the room from her, paralyzed even in the midst of his madness by fear. The frantic knocking and protests he expected from Ackbar and Gwen never came. It was silent, except for his own heart thundering through his chest, his own uneven breath hitching from his lungs, and the soft, sweet call of this girl who was here for reasons he did not understand.

He'd longed for her, hunted her, and caught her. And now he was too overwhelmed to do anything.

She whimpered and folded in on herself again, and her pain was finally what knocked him loose. His body lurched towards her, swallowing up the distance between them in long, worried strides. Her hand reached for him, and he caught it. Her skin was fire against his own. He drew it to press a kiss to her knuckles.

"Did he hurt you?" he managed to ask.

"No," she gasped. "But it hurts."

"I can make it better," he said softly.

"I know you can." And when she opened those gleaming, intelligent green eyes, he saw again the unmistakable trust.

It made him quake. "Why?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "A feeling. I can't explain it, but I know that you're mine."

Ben's heart blazed within him and _gods above_ , he'd never wanted anything more than to be possessed by her and possess her in turn. His beautiful omega. His brave, resilient, amazing omega. This one who came into her estrus when no one else did, and who called him out of his ancient slumber when no one else could.

He let go of her hand to slide a palm over her stomach, unable to stop himself from touching the place he wanted to fill. Violent visions filled his head, of pushing into this spot n her body, of breaching that inner gate and filling her until she swelled. Of delivering so much of himself to her waiting womb that conception was inescapably guaranteed.

"Alpha, your hands," she gasped softly, and he saw that he'd left tiny streaks of blood on the linen-white of her shift. His glass cuts were still seeping. They didn't have time to properly coagulate, he thought distantly. His pulse was too rapid.

"Who did this to you?" she demanded.

"I did it to myself." He didn't care about his hands. He cared about spreading her legs and settling in to linger there forever, washing himself in her slick until her scent was permanently branded into his skin. And then he wanted to paint her in his own essence, so that wherever she went, everyone would know that she belonged to him.

"Let me take care of you," she said, sitting up, kicking off his giant shoes, and grabbing his wrist.

"You can," he promised. It would be easy to soothe what tormented him now. All she needed to do was open up a little wider and let him in.

"Hands first," she said, perhaps sensing his thoughts, or maybe tracking his gaze to where the slick dripped down her calves and onto the floor in fat, wasteful globs.

Ben growled. "You're hurting, remember?"

His patience was wearing thin. He'd waited so long. He didn't want to wait anymore. But he wouldn't hurt her. He couldn't. Gwen's threat aside, everything in him rejected the thought. He couldn't just take her and use her body for his own relief, much as his raw, aching cock wept for it. His heart hungered as much for her pleasure and happiness as his own. Her needs were urgently important.

"I know how to bear it for a little while," she said softly. "I have a lot of practice. Please, let me do this first."

Ben produced a low, foreign sound, caught between a groan and a whine, but he obliged by snatching his hand out of hers and going to the displaced chest of drawers. He found a wad of muslin wraps, some whisky, and some cruel little tweezers, and brought them back to her. She sat up, folding her slick-coated legs under her on the table, and gathered the materials into her lap.

Ben stared at the way her hands trembled, head full of her thick, cloying scent. He couldn't understand why this was so important to her when her body was racked with chills and pain and hysterical demand. How could she bear it? He couldn't bear it. He wanted to be buried in her already. He sank to his knees next to the table, setting his nose against her criss-crossed legs and drawing in the thick scent of her straight from the source.

"Please let me have you, omega," he begged, tears pricking the corner of his eyes. Could he command it? Alphas had that terrifying ability — illegal in all civilized societies — to wrench another's will away from them and replace it with their own. If he somehow found the right influence to put into the words, would she abandon this nonsense and let him in?

"Soon," she promised softly, pulling one of his hands into her lap. "I feel it too. I promise. Soon."

She started with the left hand. Her fingers, despite their sickly tremor, were light and gentle as she picked the lingering glass out of his cuts. Occasionally she had to stop and breathe through some awful wave of agony, and Ben nearly lost his head. He surged to his feet, ready to push her back and plunge into her right away, to administer the medicine she needed to take, and he needed to give. Both times she grit her teeth and gave him a wincing glare until he grumbled and knelt back down again.

When she wasn't bracing through pain, she was very good. She would have made a fine nurse, or even a doctor, if they let women become doctors. Her touch was soothing. Ben leaned his hot cheek on the cool exam table and closed his eyes, reveling in the dance of her fingertips across his skin, even if it wasn't what he wanted right now.

"You smell so good, alpha," she whispered, glancing up from her work.

His contentment rumbled through his chest in an audible storm. Omega liked his scent. That was a promising beginning for them.

"Do I smell good to you too?" she wondered.

He shifted, moving his head from the table to her knee. He took a deep inhale, flames licking up through his abdomen as his cock pulsed. "Mm, like life. And home. And _mine_." The words tumbled around his chest, emerging soaked in lust and affection.

She produced a faint, weak laugh. "Is that good?"

"It's very good."

Rey set down one hand and picked up the other. "How did you hurt yourself?"

"Broke a window."

"Why?"

"To get to you."

He peeked up at her, the lovely face of his girl, the one who upended his entire life. And maybe someday he would have a crisis over his new identity and what it would mean, but right now it all felt worth it if it meant he could be here with her. Even the dull roar of his rut coursing through his body felt worth it, looking into those mossy eyes and regarding that lovely flush of color over her pallid face.

"I wanted to get to you too," she whispered. "After I left here. I couldn't stop thinking about you. I've never needed anyone before, but suddenly I...I _needed_ you. I still need you."

This moment was calm and sweet and completely wrong for the condition of their bodies, and Ben's aching heart soaked it up. But his cock throbbed in excruciating agony, and he had to bite his lip to keep from groaning. Her words were making it worse. He needed to have her already, to dive balls-deep into her forbidden sex and there release the pressure building in his pelvis.

"Rey," he pleaded. No Miss Summer now. If they were hurtling headlong into impropriety, formal last names went first.

"I know, I know," she soothed. "Almost done."

She tipped a little of the whisky into his palms, and Ben jerked to his feet with a vicious snarl, the stinging pain flaring white hot in his hands. Fury flamed bright, like fire whirling to consume some new accelerant, and he yanked the bottle out of her hands, hurling it across the room with such force as to cast it straight into hell. It shattered against the far well.

Rey seized his vest and hauled him into her, thumbing aside his collar and dropping a kiss right onto that sensitive spot at the juncture of his shoulder.

An electric jolt ran through his body and suddenly he relaxed, the anger fizzling in the blink of an eye.

"I'm sorry," she said, lifting her head to give him an apologetic smile. "I had to do it. Isn't that how you clean a wound?"

He nodded, swallowing hard. His eyes fixed on her lips. Hunched over like this, they were so close to his own. Her skin smelled sweet like lemons, and he knew that if he leaned in just a little further and took a taste, he'd get citrus on his tongue. His mouth watered at the very thought, and between his legs, he ached.

Her warm green-gray eyes watched him, those tempting lips twisting into a knowing little smile. She smelled so ripe and ready. How were they still dancing around it? Ben exhaled in silent agony as she, so sweet and demure, once more returned to his stinging hands to wrap them in the muslin strips. Salvia pooled under his tongue and his attention shifted from her mouth to the delicate curve of her neck. The symptoms she was trying to deny right now would only get worse as the night wore on. He knew this, both from his academic side and his instinctive understanding. Strong as she was attempting to be right now, it wouldn't last. Maybe he could just give her a little nudge. Maybe he could just satisfy himself with a little taste.

If Ben were in his right state of mind, he would have advised himself to endure the agony of waiting just a little longer until she invited him. But he wasn't in his right state of mind. He held the edge of control by his fingertips, only because he feared hurting her, and she was right here with her soothing touches, her reassuring words, temporarily placating the beast in his chest. And like her strength, it wouldn't last.

So he leaned forward a little further and brushed his lips to the side of her neck. He printed a kiss there, over one of her scent glands, and another, and another, tongue peeking out to get a better taste. He was heedless of the drool that slid down her skin to puddle against her collar bone. He didn't care. Let him wash her glands with _him_.

Her flavor was just as sweet as he imagined, citrus and happiness and belonging. It pulled a helpless groan of appreciation past his lips, and with the gasp she gave — the last threads of his control snapped.

Newly wrapped palms left her hands, sliding up her torso, holding her body between them as he eased her down against the exam bed. The tweezers and tray fell from her lap with a loud clatter. She squeaked in surprise but did not protest, instead sending her nimble fingers to work on the buttons of his vest. She didn't skip a beat. And oh, how Ben loved that.

He nipped and sucked at her scent gland, hungry for more of that godly ambrosia. It was opium in his system. It was stronger than the strongest substance he'd ever known. The medicine to cure all his ailments. The tonic to any malady. If he could bottle it, he could cure the world. But it didn't belong to the world. It was his alone to feast on, and he knew where he could get more of it — pure, undiluted, and thicker than water.

Pulling himself away from her skin physically hurt, but he had another destination in mind. She'd managed to get both his vest and shirt unbuttoned, and untied his tie. He shucked them all aside impatiently. The power of speech had failed him. He could not remember how to summon words, or what their use would even be. He had only one goal: getting to that nectar between her legs. But to that end, he still could not harm her. And so he checked, urgently seeking in her face any sign of reluctance or resistance. He needed his omega to want him. Needed her to approve of him.

The golden green of her eyes was warm and wanting and she brought a hand to the side of his face with a little nod. Her rosy cheeks and sweaty brow made him melt. "Take what you need, Alpha."

He whimpered. The sound might have embarrassed him in any other state of mind, but right now he couldn't help it. Why did she trust him so? Why was any of this happening? And how could she be so perfect?

"Hurry," she urged, brow knitting together. "Hurts."

Permission granted and task given, he kissed her palm once and then moved away from her side only long enough to get to the end of it. He ripped the curtains off that infernal modesty cart and grasped her ankles, thin as they were, resting them back on the support ledges. Back again where this all began, only this time he was naked from the waist up, she was in a ruined, slick-soaked shift, and this time he didn't have compunctions about doing everything that flitted through his degenerate thoughts.

He pushed her shift up to her waist, giving himself a generous eyeful of everything he wanted to claim for his own.

And how very _wet_ she was, too.

Ben slid worshipping palms up the back of her calves, admiring the sight of her, breathing deep, heady lungfuls of her potent scent. He ducked under the scaffold of the cart, leaning into it to spread her thighs apart, watching, mesmerized, as her cleft opened a little, hinting at the hidden petals inside. The glow of candlelight glistened off the wet sheen coating her skin.

He wanted to ask if this was for him, this lovely production of personalized lubrication, but the question died in his throat, spent behind a useless tongue.

Well, not _quite_ useless, perhaps. He would find a purpose for it — coaxing forth more of this sweet honey, for example. Another time, he told himself, he'd go slow and marvel that all of this was being offered to him. He'd slide slow fingers up through the slickness to explore everything he touched but did not see before, discovering all the little noises she could make. Right now was not that moment. She'd told him to take what he needed, and he would. With a quick, abrupt tug, he pulled her hips towards him and slid her right to his eagerly waiting mouth.

Somewhere, distantly, maybe, he thought she might have given a soft cry when his tongue parted her and gave a long lick right through her core. Ben registered nothing but the way she tasted. The tiniest hint of bitter myrrh, but mostly lavender and lemon and faraway places and distant warm sands. Happiness and loneliness, both the brilliant sun and the painful burn. Generous and dripping from his chin, oozing onto his curling tongue in juicy globules. His cock grew so painful he almost stopped, alarmed at the sharp, excruciating ache of his knot trying to present for duty. That part of him loathed this feast, yearning instead to chase blessed relief from this unbearable feeling. Another part of him, though, never wanted to do anything other than this.

He held her firmly against him as she writhed and gasped, mercilessly dining on her core and its succulent offerings. He sucked at her tender, sensitive bud and rolled his tongue through her again and again. The modesty cart beneath him groaned under his weight as he sank harder against her, but he didn't pay it any mind. He pushed two fingers into her and lapped eagerly at her quim, heedless of anything else. Even when the metal frame whined and bent, he ignored it. Her fingers tightened in his hair and her legs trembled against his ears, but he did not stop. He couldn't. It was everything his inner demons wanted as an appetizer, so good he could almost forget about the main course.

Almost.

Abruptly, Rey's thighs locked around his head and she bucked into him, crying out in desperate paroxysm. A gush of slick flooded Ben's face, coating his tongue, his lips, his chin. And if this were any ordinary hysteria treatment, he would finish here, satisfied that he'd served his patient well. But this wasn't ordinary, and though pleased with his omega's response, he wasn't nearly satisfied. In fact, this diluvial event only made him more desperate. He could stand the confines of his remaining clothing no more. His raw, painful cock sought another home.

The paroxysm didn't seem to soothe his omega for long either. Indeed, with the release came a sudden unendurable crescendo of her hysteria. She panted and whimpered pitifully, begging her alpha, supplications for _more_ tumbling irreverently from trembling lips.

Feverishly urgent now, Ben lifted his head and extricated himself from the mangled modesty cart. He'd owe Ackbar a new one. It hardly mattered now. He'd deal with the consequences of this night after he calmed the fire in his blood and had his omega.

He didn't have the patience to disrobe completely, not with his omega crying for him and his own cock bulging out of its own skin. So he didn't attempt it. He merely unfastened his pants and lowered the front of his breeches, choking back a sharp hiss of pain as his fingers met the oversensitive skin of his manhood.

Maybe it was a scent thing, maybe it was some other sense, but Rey must have known the moment he set it free because she sat up in a puddle of slick and reached for him. She took his weighty length in her own hands, and impossibly, they felt cool against the fire of his burning cock. Color stole across her cheeks as it throbbed in her grasp. The slitted tip already wept, beading there in preparation for a swift plunge into dark, wet, warmth. She rubbed her thumb over it, smearing his precum around his ultra-sensitive head, and Ben, gasping and quivering, could take no more.

He quickly pulled her hands away, guiding them up to his shoulders, and then wrapped his arms around her lower back, hitching her hips forward again to situate her at the very edge of the exam table. The height was right. Pleasingly so. Rey wrapped herself around him, nice and close. There. He aligned himself without ceremony to the heat that beckoned him, to the lavender and jasmine and lemon, to all the good things promised in the whorls of her intoxicating scent. To the place inside her that inflamed his senses and awakened the beast within him. Relief was so near. So very, very near. It was a scorching hot spot right against his tip, and all he needed to do was—

Rey's breath stuttered in his ear, a soft, surprised gasp that turned into a prolonged, broken _ah._

Ben braced one hand at the small of her back, the other beneath her shift, fingers curling over the curve of her ass. He pulled her steadily onto his relentless invasion, his jaw slackening against the skin of her shoulder. Ben was a good, upstanding member of society. He did not visit brothels, he did not defile gentleman's daughters. He'd only had a few fumbling encounters in his youth with a neighbor girl in one of the haystacks behind her estate. It was a foolish, pleasant thing that made him feel wonderful but which ended before either of their parents could find out and induce them to marry. Since then, he'd been perfectly honorable. A man without reproach in his conduct towards women.

Well fuck honor.

This was an encounter with the divine. Heaven wasn't some reward for a life well lived. It was here, in the body of this girl, a reward for abandoning all his morals. She was _so_ wet, and _so_ hot, and oh, so, so tight. His vision briefly whited out, and all he knew was the glorious convulsion of her silky center against him, the way her vice-like grip parted for his tapered head.

She whimpered and buried her face against his neck, clinging tight while he stretched her wide open. Her body trembled in his arms, and he wanted to ask if she was alright, but he couldn't stop. His half-formed knot was a little more difficult to squeeze inside. It took some doing. He grit his teeth and pumped a few times, quick drags that made her breath come in staccato inhales, urging her body to get used to him, to make even more lubrication for them. He guided her legs around his waist. She locked them tight behind him, allowing him the leverage to give a few deep, insistent pushes and then suddenly she jerked in his arms with a little cry and then he was through, the whole of him blessedly sheathed in this beautiful, perfect omega.

Speech came back to him all at once. A rush. A babble.

"Oh god, oh _god_ , Omega. Fuck, Rey, love, you're so perfect. So good, so ready. I was wrong before. You can take it, can't you? Just perfect, fit just right. And oh, fuck, darling, I can't—"

She kissed him once, quickly, damming up the cascade of words while she panted in his mouth. "Alpha," she crooned, groaning, shifting around him, "Alpha."

"My love," he stroked the hair back from her face, tipping his forehead against hers. His hips wanted to buck, wanted to rut into her roughly, but now that he was encased in her velvet interior, making sure she was alright became more important than anything else. "Darling, tell me how you feel."

"Full," she mumbled, squirming again. "Feels good. But it's...so much."

Too much, yes. He felt it too. If the haze of lust cleared, he knew he'd be paralyzed by terror at everything his body was experiencing right now. But it wouldn't clear. He was safely shrouded in a miasma of glorious need, and she was suiting those needs just perfectly.

She arched in his arms, still trying to adjust her angle. He gently urged her to lean back. She braced her forearms on the table, her cheeks flushed scarlet, eyes wide as she glanced between them. Ben looked too, at the spot where he disappeared into her. Such a thick, aching thing to be stuck through her. His cock throbbed eagerly, and she reached between them to skate quivering fingers around the taut base of him, where his pelvis met hers.

Ben's head lolled back, eyes drifting closed as he flexed his hips and gave a few experimental thrusts, not really pulling out, just grinding into her. It felt so inhumanely good. Painful and delicious, more sensation than he'd ever experienced before. The privilege of the gods, he thought. This feeling belonged to them, not mere mortals. Mortals had no way of containing so much pleasure. His cock had hurt in a manner far worse than any erection he'd ever had in his life, like his skin would split from the pressure. But it hurt so much less now, as if he might survive this after all, as if her tightness were specifically meant to hold him together. Relief drowned out any urgency he had. Her unyielding squeeze, the pressure of her passage, eased the ache in his shaft. He could stay here forever.

"My perfect girl," he groaned. "You're taking it so well. I know it's a lot. You're amazing, my love."

She fell back against the pillow, moaning softly as her hands slid over his, still holding her waist.

"Alpha," she whispered. "Please, need more. Still hurts."

Horror made him stomach drop, and he put a hand low on her pelvis, where he lay nestled inside. "It hurts? Did I hurt you?"

"No," she gasped, wrenching her head to the side. "The emptiness. It hurts. Please, please, Alpha, it's good. You feel good there. I want more. Need more."

Her scent bloomed around him anew, thick and bitter and needy. Her hysteria was truly in full effect now, tipped into full bloom by _him_. It drove Ben absolutely wild to know this. He'd shed his meaningless existence for her, and now she'd gone into full estrus for him. They were meant to be. _This_ was meant to be.

These drunken thoughts crashed through his mind deliriously as he fought to make her feel better, tugging his nascent knot back out, setting a quick pace of thrusts.

"Is this what you need, Omega?" he said, satisfaction curling inside him to know that these little sounds falling from her mouth were all for him.

She nodded, head arching against the pillow, pushing her breasts up. "Oh god, Alpha, yes."

Ben growled in pleasure, bending over the table, nuzzling against one of her soft swells, still chastely covered by her flimsy shift. He dove again and again into her wet heat, overcome with the incandescent bliss being wrung from his rhythmically squeezed shaft and the gasps tumbling through her chest, and further delighted himself by exploring her presenting nipple through the fabric. He flicked it with his tongue, enjoying how she squirmed, enjoying how his cock surged forward in an uneven thrust of arousal when he took it into his mouth, sucking it hard through her shift. He held her down with one hand, giving himself the leverage to keep pushing into her, but the other he snaked up her body and played with her unattended breast, rolling the nipple between his fingers, kneading her soft flesh.

"Alpha," she groaned, her fingers sliding to the back of his head. "Feels so good."

His thrusts were strong enough to send the table skidding back a couple of inches with each blow, feet groaning along the ground. Slick smeared between them, over her inner thighs, over his. Such a mess they were making. And Ben loved it. Nothing so vulgar had never happened here, and Ben reveled in their immorality. In this unchaste, desperate coupling of two people driven mad by need. And he thought perhaps that everything he'd ever learned in medical school was wrong. This wasn't a matter of _biles_ and balances. This was an act as ancient and godly as prayer. Betas couldn't understand. He couldn't understand, until now. They tried to make science explain it, arranging it in tidy order so they could claim they knew it all. They knew nothing.

Radiant, rising sensation built in his groin, concentrated at the tip of him spreading her open again and again. His racing heart thudded harder and suddenly he knew he wouldn't last long. He wrapped his arms around her, hauling her back up and clutching her tight to him. She wrapped her arms around him automatically, her pants now filling his ear in delicious desperation. It utilized every muscle he knew and didn't know, keeping her fully impaled upon him as he lifted her from the exam table and staggered the short distance to the desk he and Ackbar used for notes and study. The desk was not his aim, but the soft rug beneath it. He was going to fall into crisis imminently, and instinct told him to knot his omega somewhere more comfortable than leaning over an exam table.

The jostling made her whimper into his neck, her muscles contracting around him. Answering pangs of pleasure shot through his shaft and deep into his balls, and hell's bells, he was so ready to come apart inside her. With trembling legs he sank to his knees and lowered her onto her back. The rug was obscenely expensive. Ackbar had bought it off a botanical explorer pair, recently returned from a scientific survey of South America. They said it came from an animal, a little like a sheep and a little like a horse, that the locals called _llama_. It was fluffy and softer than anything he'd ever felt.

The perfect luxury for his omega.

She ran her hands into the thick fur, cooing her approval. "Soft," she sighed happily.

Finally, everything was right. Allowing them a moment of pause, still nestled deep inside her, Ben plucked at the string tying the front of her shift together, using his teeth to draw the bow apart. He unlaced her one by one, pushing the sides apart enough that her sweet little breasts finally came into view. Not that the soaked spots he'd left in the fabric had concealed much by the end. With a gentle touch, he brushed his thumbs over each of them. Just perfect. The way her skin glistened with sweat and saliva, burning with feverish desire.

He propped himself up on his hands, holding himself above her to take her in. So pretty. His omega was beautiful.

Her fingers traced along his face, light and affectionate. Ben was startled by the wave of emotion that moved through him at the touch. Her complicated hazel eyes met his, and for a moment they both experienced a shy flash of clarity. They were two strangers, dragged into this most intimate of experiences. And yet still he saw that trust. That affection. It was written into the forested depths of her stare, into the little smile that ghosted over her lips. He knew her, somehow. It didn't make sense. He couldn't explain it. But he saw that she knew him too. They might be strangers in the worldly sense, but in some other indefinable way, they weren't really strangers at all.

The brief, tender moment snapped a moment later when her brows drew together and she turned her face away, eyes closing as the softest of little whimpers whined through her throat and her body clenched around him. He still hadn't made her better. His instincts raged at him. Gaze and ponder later. Fuck now.

He jerked back sharply and plunged back inside. Her tight center was his salvation, and his spend would be hers. He undulated into her in long, brutal strokes, working her through her pain and his own until there was only mutual trembling and moans of bliss. Her name and designation swirled in his mouth like invocations, trailing over his tongue with reverence, with lust, with throaty praise. And she asked for him, clinging to him and begging and approving and oh, it was all the acclaim he'd ever need for the rest of his days.

She spiraled into crisis first, crying out much as she'd done before. Her body clenched down on him so hard he almost couldn't move. The pulses of her release rippled along the whole length of him, hard and visceral, and Ben groaned in appreciation. He managed to dip in and out, to keep working her through it. And then when her body relaxed enough for full thrusts again, he chased his ruin faster and harder than before. The wet smacks of their slick bodies filled the room with lewd sounds.

And then it happened all at once, in a blinding flash of pain and pleasure immeasurable.

One minute the pressure was surging in his pelvis, a wave of feeling rising, cresting, rolling — and then it crashed over him. His balls tightened and a hoarse cry tore its way from his throat as the thickened bulge at his base suddenly swelled, holding him fast inside her. And then before the panic of that sensation could fade, he found himself doubled over, tears springing to his eyes as a jet of spent burst through him with such force, his vision blacked out. He gave another alarmed gasp as it happened again, and again, another and another spurt jettisoning from him in a searing spill of heat. It was more ejaculate than he'd ever produced in his life, pouring into her in ceaseless spasms and spills.

Rey struggled, clutching his bowed head to her chest as she keened with each strong throb of his knot and twitch of his head at the entrance of her womb.

"It's too much," she wrenched out, thrashing her head from side to side. "There's too much."

But Ben couldn't pull out, and he couldn't stop coming. His whole body was frozen in this wracking, tormenting pleasure. There was nothing he could do to stem the relentless tide of a body determined to seed her. He was as overwhelmed by it was she was, astonished and terrified. It felt cosmic. As if every tightly held secret of the gods were right here for the taking, and if he would only let go of his mind, these powerful surges of life-giving _him_ into life-making _her_ would take them to brilliant colorful visions of divine truth.

She arched under him, and Ben lifted his head. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Citrus exploded on his tongue. Her pleasure rocketed through his body as she came again in sudden violent force. She cried out into his mouth, and he swallowed it. He kissed her again, and again, gentle but insistent. That mouth that this morning had second guessed and doubted him, that had twisted in smirks and dipped in doubt. The mouth that had uttered _alpha_ and drawn out his deepest truth. It was his to kiss and claim, and it was as sweet as he imagined. When her paroxysm let her go, she held him and kissed him back harder, and slowly, slowly, they brought each other down from the fear and ecstasy.

"Is it better?" he asked in a soft, wrecked voice when their breath returned and their hearts stopped pounding out of their chests. He brushed some sticky hair back from her face. "The pain?"

She smiled a little. "It's gone."

He sighed in relief, dropping one more kiss onto those lovely little lips. His body was quickly losing strength, exhaustion setting in after hours and hours of adrenaline. He still spasmed inside her every now and then, aftershocks squirting more spend into her at unpredictable intervals. But he'd gotten enough sense back to figure out how to ease them onto their sides, guiding one of her legs up and over his hip so as not to tug too hard against the spot where they were stuck.

It wasn't the most comfortable place to lie. The rug was soft as silk, but they didn't have any pillows to rest their heads on, or blankets to warm their cooling bodies. He slid an arm under his head. She did the same. They stared at each other in a kind of affectionate curiosity. Ben's head felt clearer now, almost as clear as before this all began. He realized anew how strange this turn of events was. Here he lay, beneath Ackbar's desk, buried deep inside this girl who had come to him as an anomalous patient only this morning. He was continuously spilling seed into her womb, and she seemed _happy_ about it.

How strange.

"I don't want to just call you _alpha_ ," she said with a little smile. "Or Doctor Solo."

"Ben," he said. "My name is Benjamin, but for you, Ben."

"Ben," she repeated, her smile growing. "I can't believe you came for me."

He took her hand in his, toying with her fingers, printing a kiss into each finger pad. "I don't know the first thing about what I am now, or why it happened. But I know that I need you. Strange, isn't it?"

"The strangest," she laughed. "I never thought to be with an alpha in my life. Suddenly all I wanted was to be with you. Can your medical education give us any answers?"

"No," he said immediately. "Oh, they'll try. No doubt. Ackbar took my blood. He took your secretions. They'll look at us and try to explain it, because nothing is so intolerable to the human mind as an unanswered question. But I don't think they'll ever understand it. I don't know if we will either."

"What did I tell you about saying 'secretions?'" she teased, eyes flashing in that now-familiar sharpness.

He chuckled. "Sorry. What would you have me call it?"

"Where I'm from, we just call it 'slick.'"

"More vulgarity," he lamented dramatically. "You've really got quite a mouth on you."

She squirmed a little, tilting her hips, pushing down on his knot, provoking another spurt from him. "So how long does this last?"

Ben gave an experimental tug. They both hissed sharply. He exhaled and shuddered, careful to set aside the instinctual panic of being literally stuck to another person. "I don't know. Don't you?"

"How would I know? I've never been with an alpha."

His face warmed with a creeping blush. "I suppose I assumed people of your designation tend to know these things about your opposites."

"I don't exactly talk about the duration of knots with others like me." She gave an amused huff and tapped his sternum with a finger. "You didn't study alpha anatomy the way you studied omegas?"

"There is no study of alpha anatomy. We — _they_ think they know all the need to about the more bestial designation. We know the gland distribution, their purposes, the distension of the vascular bulb, the ability to command, and the phenomenon of mania. As far as my colleagues are concerned, there's nothing else to entice them to study alpha biology further."

She scooted a little closer, snuggling into his chest. "More fool them. I think your biology is quite nice."

Ben still wasn't sure about his new knot, or the way his senses could so hijack his body as to the complete subjugation of all his reason and logic, but it comforted him that she liked it, at least. It was all for her anyway.

He felt compelled to hold her close, and so he did, using his free arm to wrap around her and cuddle her against him. It felt good to have her here. It felt right. As if he was always meant to have her wrapped around him like this, tangled together, fitted like jigsaw pieces. And truly this rightness was as dizzying as it was comforting. When he woke this morning, he found his life quite satisfactory in its routine. He wanted nothing more than what he had. But now, he couldn't imagine how he ever thought he could live without this. Without _her_. He hadn't realized how bereft he was until he wasn't anymore.

It spooked him. It soothed him. It made him feel a hundred nonsensical things, and he was helpless to try to reason his way out of any of it.

Her scent was pacified and sweet again, honey-sweet flowers and lemons, just as lovely as when she walked in. Ben's mouth twitched into a little grin, and a low rumbling noise rolled over in his chest, tumbling around inside him in audible thunder.

She stretched, nosing her way to his neck where she swiped a kitten lick over his gland. "My alpha is purring."

Oh yes, he was _hers_ in every sense of the word.

"Why are you smiling? Why are you purring?" she asked, teasing the edges of his smile with her fingers.

"It is a source of some marvel to me, darling, that your happiness moves me so profoundly. I didn't know it was possible to feel this way. I like it very much. I must always keep you happy."

She buried herself against him once more. "Nobody has ever taken it upon them to see to my happiness. I don't know what to do with that."

"Let me," he urged.

She didn't say anything for a minute. Deep inside her, another bloom of his essence warmed them both. Finally she kissed his chest and said, "I will."

They lay in contended silence for a long time. No sounds disturbed their stillness, neither from a world asleep outside or a stirring of another presence in the house. They were blessedly alone. And eventually, with a funny kind of tingling, Ben felt an easing of the pressure encasing him. It wasn't so tight now. He gave another test tug, and found he could slip out. Before he did, however, he shifted, dipping an arm between them, cupping the place where they were joined. And good thing he did, too, because when he eased out of her stretched center, a gush of fluid came with him, pooling in his hand. Only a little spilled over, dappling the expensive llama hide. The rest he tipped back inside her, pushing it in, holding his palm to the place to keep it from coming back out.

She adjusted, sitting halfway up. "Alpha, I love this rug. But I don't...I need...more soft things. A softer place than this room."

Yes, a bedroom. Ben understood. The next time they did this — and he knew it would not be long coming, for even now, the absence of her tightness holding himself together was starting to allow the ache to return — he wanted to hold her somewhere more comfortable than the floor. His room was destroyed, but Ackbar had another empty room. He lent it to his son whenever he came for a visit.

"I will take care of you," he promised. He took one of her hands and brought it between her legs, guiding three of her own fingers inside her. "Hold this in, please, darling."

She wriggled against her own hand as he stripped off her ruined shift at last and got to his knees. He slipped an arm under her legs, the other under her back. She looped her unoccupied arm around his neck, and this manner, he was able to lift her with some effort.

Pushing his back against the chest of drawers, he freed the door and opened it, leaving the messy exam room behind, carrying his prize off into a quiet house. Ackbar and Gwen were long gone. They were alone. That was good, because the anticipatory throbbing low in his groin told him this was far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to add a chapter to finalize everything. These two wanted to take their sweet time and the word count really blew up.


	3. Chapter 3

Doctor Alucard Snoke's Home for Omega Convalescence was not a good place for an omega to end up. Ben didn't like to think of his time there. It left him feeling sticky with a detestable sense of shame. He'd once considered Doctor Snoke, one of the oldest and most respected authorities in omega health, a brilliant mentor and role model. When Snoke explained why the omegas were denied soft bed linens and materials by which to make their nest, citing a stern need for treatment rather than unhelpful indulgence, Ben thought it was the right thing. When omegas would weep in their lonely, cold cells, given only water and strong tonics to drug them out of thrashing, Ben would turn a deaf ear and tell himself it was for their benefit.

By and by, in a process that was far too slow, he began to see Snoke's methods as unnecessarily cruel. The old doctor absolutely _refused_ to consider new research regarding hysteria treatments, and it began to occur to Ben that Snoke enjoyed watching the omegas suffer more than he enjoyed easing that suffering. Eventually, Ben left the home and took up employment in another institution. This one was not run by a doctor, but a wealthy benefactor of modern medicine, Madam Tano. There, he saw the value of allowing a hysterical omega to nest. Madam Tano insisted that her staff supply her patients with all the soft materials they required.

Watching omegas of both sexes arrange blankets, linens, and pillows in a manner so inhuman that it sent chills up his spine, never failed to make Ben both fascinated and disturbed. Nevertheless, the effects were irrefutable. Though they still ached and wept and begged for relief, the omegas who were allowed to burrow deep into their safe, soft places were noticeably calmer than the ones denied such indulgence.

Eventually Ben learned of Ackbar's work to stop hysteria before it began, and he knew he could no longer be on the late end of medicine. He didn't want to help omegas suffer anymore, he wanted to stop the suffering altogether.

It had been a long time since he'd seen anyone build a nest.

Rey trolled around Ackbar's various rooms, plundering any soft item she could find. She dragged the mattress off the guest bed and put it in the corner. She made Ben scoot the large metal safe Gwen had put in front of his door out of the way, so she could go in and rescue his mattress from the debris.

"Smells like you," she explained when he tried to protest. He didn't want her going in there. She was naked and there were plenty of sharp, shattered things to hurt her. He went in instead, shaking the damn mattress out before hauling it over to where she wanted.

It was strange and surreal to watch someone he cared for fall into a kind of single-minded madness. It spooked him just enough to cool the edge of his rut, persuading his body to adopt patience instead of eagerly anticipating his next knot. She looked so desperate, working up a sweat as she fussed and primped, like it was the most important thing in the world. Some worried voice in his head wanted to calm her, to tell her it didn't matter, to soothe her until she relaxed into his arms.

But there was another voice in his head too. And this one liked very much what was happening here. It stroked his instincts in a powerful way, and he found himself purring with pleasure, helping her carry more piles of blankets stolen from Ackbar's own room. He wanted to assist his industrious little omega in the construction of a cozy safe place they were meant to populate. And she was so very good at it. Even as half of him worried, the other half delighted. She was making this for him. For them.

"It's a fine nest," he said approvingly when she finished. "Very fine. You're so clever. I love it."

She beamed, wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing him tight. Ben's cock twitched against her belly, recognizing her body as somewhere desirable. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. The heat from her scalp warmed his lips, and he could feel how her breath came fast and short. Either she'd exhausted herself making the nest or…

"Are you ready for more, dear one?" he whispered, thumbing over her gland as he slid a hand up the back of her neck. She shivered at the touch, and within him, that dark predatory thing stirred with interest. He liked how she reacted when he touched that spot. His other hand wandered south, over the smooth globe of her ass. It filled him with wonder that he should be allowed to touch this beautiful woman this way. That she made a soft sigh of pleasure and nibbled at his skin when he did it.

She nodded, but her grip around him didn't yield. So Ben carefully shuffled them to the edge of her creation.

"Shouldn't you sleep?" he asked softly, and he wasn't sure if it was academic understanding of the traumatic rigors a heat could have on an omega body, or if it was a surging, powerful instinct to take care of her. He wanted her to rest, even more than he desperately wanted to plunge inside her again.

She frowned. "Knot first, then rest."

"You want to sleep on my knot, darling?" he asked, heart clenching inside him. He wanted that more than anything.

"Yes," she breathed softly against his skin, tipping her head back as Ben's fingers trailed through the slick making a mess of that sweet little divot where her thighs and the cleft of her ass met. "May I?"

He kissed her once, quickly. "Of course you may. I will give you everything you need."

And he needed too, if the painful throb of his iron-hard shaft between them was any indication. She pulled away from him, lowering herself into the nest. Ben followed her right down, pausing at the edge with a sudden spike of anxious hesitation. He knew how territorial hysterical omegas were about their nests. If a doctor or nurse violated the space, they'd become positively apoplectic with outrage. Ben didn't want to do that to her. He wasn't sure how to proceed. She wanted to be in the nest, comfortably knotted, and he wanted to fuck her senseless, but how to accommodate either without encroaching on her safe space...?

"Alpha," she pleaded, rolling over onto her knees, stretching her upper body out like a cat, ass in the air, glistening thighs and slit presented for his inspection. "Please."

The primal beast in Ben's chest seized control in a surge of instinct, ignoring whatever reservations he had about the nest. In fact, he forgot the nest entirely, consumed by a carnal need to breed that ripe, dripping cunt. He stepped into the soft chaos and dropped to his knees, grabbing her perfect cheeks in his hands, kneading them as he ducked his head and buried his face in the wet mess. She smelled a little different here now. Like lavender and jasmine and lemon, yes, but there were darker notes now. Like fresh ink scratching into old paper, like book binding glue and late library nights.

A library built within a fragrant garden, with open, glassless windows to let in the fresh, floral-scented air.

Ben pushed two fingers into her, drawing out a considerable sample of their combined milky essence, his and hers. It displeased him to take it from her, but he had to know. And yes, the new mixed smell was stronger. He wiped it under her, along her clit, slipping it around her sensitive bud in quick, practiced swirls. She let her head drop into the nest and gave a muffled groan, pushing back against him, leaking and squirming for more.

She had lost too much of his earlier deposit during her feverish construction. Ben would need to start all over again, this business of filling her up. He was eager to do it. Ready to do it. He repositioned, fitting himself to her hollow and then taking hold of her hips, dragging her back onto him in a swift, merciless plunge. It was easier this time than the first, but the sound that rushed from her indicated it was overwhelming nonetheless. She lifted herself up onto her hands, pushing back against him until his early knot popped through, panting with the effort required to take him.

Ben grit his teeth against the searing pleasure of being so very tightly gripped by her, his wonder unable to restrain the beast in rut. He leaned his body over hers, thrusts shallow but rough as he palmed her swaying breasts and suckled harsh marks into her shoulder blades. Her skin tasted sweet, but not sweet enough. His tongue craved more. His teeth, nipping lightly against her flesh, ached to sink in far enough to draw blood. He could smell her glands, but from his position, could not easily access them. The angle needed to stay inside her wasn't quite right. He snarled in frustration and punished her for being out of range of his teeth by sitting back up, taking hold, and pounding her _hard_.

She whimpered these sweet little desperate sounds. Ben loved them. He loved the way she trembled and pushed back against him, as if even in her distress, she wanted _more_. He loved the way his heavy sack beat against her mound with every rough shove into her silken interior. He loved the sweat and the salt and the slick, and how very pliable and willing his lovely little omega was.

Time slipped out of focus, and the wracked, tormented doctor could not have said how long he worked his patient that second time, nor how many times she fell apart before he gave a startled cry and clutched her tight, wrapping his arm around her belly to hug her tight to him as his knot abruptly swelled and he began that terrible, pleasurable process of unleashing gouts of seed into her.

He couldn't have said how long they slept after, cuddled together in the soft, warm nest, her back ember-hot against his chest, his shaft firmly embedded in her soaking, creamy wet heat. He didn't know how many times they desperately coupled that night, or when the morning came. He only knew her. His omega. And her waves of need and comfort. He knew that when he sat her astride his lap and pushed her down onto his knot, she cried out and sank her teeth into his shoulder for comfort. He knew that he wanted her to bite again, elsewhere, and that he wouldn't be satisfied until she did.

It got worse as that strange, incalculable time wore on. He slept and fucked, and sometimes when she slept and he could pull out, he rummaged around the various apartments for food and water. He felt desperate to ensure she ate, even though she protested whenever he tried. Between the lust and the dizzying affection came flashes of anxiety for her wellbeing. She was already too thin. She couldn't afford to exert this much energy and not replenish. He kept her as hydrated and nourished as he could, and pumped her full of seed during all the times between.

Once, when he was foraging around for food, he went in to the exam room to see if Ackbar had any dried, salted pork as he sometimes kept in his personal supply cupboard. He liked to chew them late at night when he worked on research. Ben found the canister, but he also found his own family ring, still left by the washbasin where he'd taken it off days ago. He snatched it up in a flash of purpose and carried both finds triumphantly back to the nest.

When Rey woke, he made her eat a piece, despite her grumbles, and he slid the family ring onto one of her fingers. It was a wildly inappropriate gesture, reserved strictly for a man bringing a wife into his household. But Ben wasn't really the best judge of appropriate behaviors at the moment. He only knew that whenever he wasn't physically tied to her with a swollen knot, he felt uneasy dissatisfaction roiling around chest. Some instinctual part of him perhaps hoped that giving her the ring would satisfy the unease. It didn't.

Rey blinked at the ring in surprise. It was much too big for her finger. Ben didn't like that. He removed it and put it on her thumb. Still loose, but a little better. She pulled him down, kissed him, and guided his cock back to where she wanted it.

She didn't say much about it. Neither of them really said much of anything. Words came few and far between. There was, of course, the mindless pleading and grunting and cursing that came with the hysterical and maniacal response, but they weren't good at the kind of higher thought required for actual communication in the meanwhile. Not at first, anyway. It changed around the second day, when Ben finally found a way to quiet that disgruntled thing inside him.

He was particularly lost to his instincts then, deep in the throes of his vicious, demanding rut. He was beside himself any time he was not actively fucking or locked inside his omega. She tried to soothe him in between, kissing him, urging him to sleep, holding him close and smearing her slick into his glands. Her efforts only tempered his fires momentarily, and then he was back to begging her.

"Please, just a little more. Let me give you just a little more."

"Not yet," she'd demur, stroking his hair and coaxing him to drink water. "Wait until I'm ready."

"You can take it," he pleaded. It made his blood simmer with agitation, this separation from her, this nagging unease that she might be losing too much of his spend during these unplugged times. His head grew fuzzy and thick at the very thought of even one inch of space inside her that was not coated with his essence. It was madness. Logical Ben would have known this, would have been horrified at the way he tried to persuade her to let him knot her just one more time — but Logical Ben was gagged, bound, and thrown in a closet right now. Only the Alpha remained.

She kissed him and straddled him as he sat against the wall, sinking onto him before she was quite ready, such a good girl trying to take care of her inexperienced, desperate alpha. She moved his hands to her breasts when he tried to hold her down and buck into her.

"No," she said softly. "I can take you like this. But don't move yet."

And at first it made him whine, being inside her, ready to knot, but not being allowed to fuck her. She kissed him, soft and slow, until he started to calm down. She encouraged his hands to knead her breasts, trailed gentle fingers over his glands, scraped tingling trails of pleasure through his scalp. And little by little, Ben relaxed. He liked this feeling of being inside her, even if he wasn't knotted, even if he couldn't move to chase the friction he craved. It was nice anyway. One hand stimulated a breast while the other took to wandering, charting the muscles in her back, the sweet curve of her spine.

When his thumb found a scent gland in the valley between her hip and her leg, her head tipped back away from him and she sighed with pleasure. This act bore the glands on her neck to him. His eyes caught, his mouth watered, and before she could protest, he took to exploring those glands with his lips. They were heavenly. He nursed the flavor from them and savored the way his belly ached pleasantly. His balls felt heavy and tender, like a man too long denied a release.

He lapped at her glands and he could think of was painting the inside of her body with his seed until life began to grow where it never had before. _His_ omega. And she was _his_. He needed to make sure of it. Nobody else could ever have her. She would never need to hide again, never need to lock herself in a cellar to be safe during her heat. Ben would keep her safe. He'd provide for her, and their pups, and he'd make sure she had all the nice things she could want. She could pursue her dreams without the fickle whims of society holding her back. She was _his_ , and his omega would have _everything_.

A particular gland fascinated him more than the others.

Her flavor was stronger here, both darker and more potent. And when he sucked it, she ground against him, providing the movement he needed to stimulate his already eager cock. When he scraped his teeth against it, she shuddered and breathed his name and dug her fingers into his hair.

Possessive thoughts swirled through his mind as he obsessed over that specific spot. Thoughts of _mine_ , and _mate._ He knew how vulnerable she was in the world. How other alphas, less privileged than he, would try to take her for their own. She didn't want them. She had waited for _him_. She had called _him_. And when he came for her, she willingly chose _him_. An ancient, bone-deep certainty told him that they belonged to each other. There was no one else on earth for him, and no one else for her.

"Mine," he growled against her skin, and the taste of iron mingled with citrus and lavender.

She gave a hoarse cry, grinding hard as they both crested abruptly, their bodies unified in some mysterious flash of bliss. Ben's knot swelled inside her, his spend flowing in slow, steady waves. And this time, he barely paid it any thought. The pleasure tightened through his groin, his aching shaft, his sensitive testes. None of it mattered. It was all cursory garnish on an already exquisite dish. His heart swelled bigger than his knot. He could only think of this seeping sense of joy in his chest, lapping as the blood under his tongue, against her skin. He could only think of the overwhelming relief that he'd found her, that she was here, and that she would never leave him. He could only feel the entire unfurling of his soul from a gnarled little bud into full, glorious bloom, and understand that he wasn't alone. Not in his own skin, and not in this journey through life.

A tendril of anxiety snaked through his shocked, joyful heart. He could not understand it, until he felt the girl shaking in his arms, and jerked his head up in alarm. Surely this was merely some interpretation of his mind, born by the intimacy of the last two days, translating her physical cues into the knowledge the anxiety curling tight into his chest was hers and not his. Surely there had to be an explanation other than...than what? This primal knowledge that she now shared some small corner of his mind? That part of her heart was woven into his? Because it felt like that, even though he had never heard of such a thing.

Under normal circumstances, seeing someone for whom he cared deeply dissolve into tears would have killed all arousal immediately, so it was a bit disorienting and a little upsetting that his body responded by spurting more spend in to her, making him shiver with orgasmic pleasure even as he worried for her wellbeing.

"Darling," he said, finding words again after so very few of them. "What's wrong? Tell me."

It was an odd sensation, harboring feelings that were not his own. He felt pleasure and gladness and relief, but that undeniable clench of anxiety too, none of it originating in him. He brushed her tears away and kissed her gently, all his instincts screaming at him to make it better. He wasn't sure how, especially since she just shook her head and kissed him harder instead of telling him what the emotions tumbling through them both meant. But he thought that maybe he knew what she wanted anyway, so he guided her head to the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. She licked once over the spot there, and Ben's cock inside her jumped with another forceful burst of spend. He exhaled, eyes rolling back in his head. She did it again, and shivered. A touch of the anxiety abated. Ben stroked her back and made encouraging noises, happy to have found something that soothed his omega.

Only...it didn't soothe her for long.

A change rippled through her, felt both in her naked body shuddering against his, and also in the indefinable knowledge that echoed somewhere in the back of his head. Her fear, or worry, or whatever it was that made her anxious, was transforming into a kind of anger. A kind of willful wroth, storming around between them like rebellion. Her lips on his gland got firmer, her teeth scraping him, and Ben began to spill in a continuous stream inside her. He couldn't breathe. His hands found her waist and gripped her tight, pushing his knot further into her while his head lolled back unconsciously. The feeling of her teasing his gland like that...

She reached up and grabbed his face, yanking it back to her. Her eyes were blazing and fierce, and Ben felt her surge of determination.

"I'm yours, alpha," she said sternly.

Was that even a question? Of course she was. "You are," he agreed.

"But you're mine, too." Her lips were flushed red from stimulation. He wanted to kiss them again, but she jerked back a bit when he darted in to catch them for his own. "Do you understand? I've never had anything. But I _will_ have you."

"Of course you will," he agreed, again not understanding. What else did she need to be certain of him? She wasn't walking out of here without him. They were tethered, by fate, by his unleashed contribution to her waiting womb, by the string of her that was stuck straight through his heart.

"You've taken whatever you want. Now I get to take what I want too." Another flash of defiance in her clear hazel eyes, and her head dipped again to his chest. And this time, when her teeth found him, she sank them in deep.

Ben gasped, choking on a cry, as all his senses briefly vanished in favor of a white celestial rapture.

* * *

At first, he didn't really understand what they'd done.

He only knew how much _calmer_ he felt afterwards. That unease that accompanied him whenever they weren't knotted disappeared. He could relax. His desperation to fill her as much as possible eased. He still wanted to, of course, but he no longer felt as if the fate of the world hinged on his success. And it satisfied him more now to see the ring on her finger. It was right. Exactly where it should be.

By the evening of the third day, understanding began to trickle in through the haze. And Gwen was right. Ben Solo did loathe himself more on the other side of the mania than he did when it began. He was disgusted at how far he'd fallen into animal madness. He was embarrassed at some of the things he'd said and done to this girl who really only knew his name and nothing else. And he felt sick when he realized he'd broken her skin without asking, without thinking through his decision, without making certain she truly wanted a permanent bond with _him_ , a stranger.

But Gwen was wrong, too. Because it was hard to feel horrified or disgusted for long when having a mate felt so blissfully _right_ too. The way his heart sang with joy in his chest when his mate peered up at him with a shy smile, plugged but lucid now, and traced the shape of his grin with a single finger. She was still the most charming creature he'd ever known, and it astonished him how their scents mingled now. That garden library again, each carrying a little bit of each other.

"Do you regret it?" she asked him when their bath had cooled. Ben sat behind her in the large clawfoot tub, washing her body meticulously with a soft cloth. "Sometimes I can feel your alarm."

His gaze fell to the shape of his teeth on her gland, scabbed and angry right now. Terrible. He knew that in time, the mark would fade to a pearlescent scar. For now, however, it looked frightful. Still, it made his stomach flip in a strangely pleasant way to know that he put it there. That those frightfully violent marks made her his, forever.

"I ought to," he said carefully. "I know that I ought to. The part of me that is still...adjusting...to the change _is_ alarmed. Mostly out of concern for you. But no, darling. I don't regret it. Do you?"

"No," she said immediately, turning her head to give him this little smile. "But then, I have the advantage here. You know what they'll say, of course. Your people. They'll say I caught you to improve my station."

"Hm." Ben considered. They likely _would_ say that. Of course, many of the good society people Ben usually associated with would probably treat him like some kind of rabid dog, now that he wasn't the decent Beta they all believed him to be before. Perhaps his family connection would be enough to keep him in the general good graces of society. If so, they certainly would look at his chosen mate and whisper that she had seduced him to climb into rank and fortune.

"And if you have done that?" he wondered aloud. "Would that really be so bad? I'm delighted to give you a better life than you had before."

She leaned back against his chest, sighing. "My naive prince. People like me don't get to move up in the world without causing offense. What's done is done, and I'm prepared to endure it. But I'm concerned you are not."

Ben dipped his head and kissed his mark on her skin, provoking a little spark of delight in them both. "I was not prepared for any of this when you walked in three days ago, and I'm no more prepared for it now. Nevertheless I know that you are mine, and I am yours, and nothing else matters more to me than your happiness. They can talk. As long as you are not hurt by it, I couldn't care less what they may say."

Ben didn't tell her that he preferred the quiet life anyway. He did not often attend those lavish social functions to which he was always invited, not by popularity but by his privilege alone. He enjoyed being out on the lake far more, or taking a stroll through the park. People were tedious. He suspected they would be vastly more tedious now that they'd feel at liberty to remark on his strange transformation. Rey would not be subjected to situations where she'd have to endure their askance glances very frequently.

Their blood fully cooled on the fourth day. While Rey slept to recover her energy, Ben washed, dressed, and tried his best to set Ackbar's clinic to rights again. He _almost_ felt like his old self again. Almost. There was, of course, that bit of his mate curled contentedly into the corner of his awareness. The possessiveness that consumed him before remained as well, though satisfied and unthreatened for now. But if not for these subtle differences, he might be able to convince himself that he was exactly the man he was before all this strangeness began.

The clinic smelled like sex. That altered bit of him took smug pride in this, reveling in the evidence of what they'd done here. But the sane part of him knew it wasn't a good thing, and the consequences could be severe. Ackbar's patients, omegas on the cusp of hysterical meltdown, would be adversely affected walking into a place that smelled so heavily of alpha and omega and copulation. Ben doubted he'd still have a job, being what he was now, but he still felt a sense of duty when it came to putting right everything he'd ruined. Ackbar had always been good to him. He was a fair employer. Ben didn't want to destroy the good man's practice for something he'd done.

So he stepped outside, took a deep breath of fresh air full of new scents to interpret, and found a youth. He commissioned the boy to go and fetch Gwen, and also to hire a couple of beta cleaning women. The boy gave him a suspicious look.

"Is it blood? That's a medical clinic, isn't it? Did you make a mess of someone's blood?"

Ben huffed in amusement. "Something of that nature. Go quickly, please."

He went.

And when Gwen soon enough arrived, Ben did not let her into the clinic. He'd gone upstairs to check on Rey and ensure she was still soundly asleep. She was. When the knock came, he stepped out and ushered Gwen backwards, closing the door behind him.

She didn't even try to enter. Instead she took one whiff and winced. "Congratulations, Doctor, you have survived your first rut. Now you need to acquire an entirely new clinic for Doctor Ackbar, as this one needs to be burned to the ground."

Ben rolled his eyes. "Thank you for coming. I have a favor to ask."

It was...different, talking to Gwen now. She smelled familiar, but non-threatening. That was good. He'd worried she would be hostile to him after the way he'd behaved. Instead, what he found in her scent and in her face was understanding. She knew how it was. And now Ben had a new respect for her in turn.

Gwen glanced at the clinic behind him. "If your favor is to help you clean up, no, thank you. I don't need to be thrown into mania today. My omega is off to visit his parents and his family has a hard enough time with his designation. It would terrify them if I came crashing into their house demanding my mate because I need to breed."

A curious mix of amusement, sobering understanding, and sympathy swept through the doctor. Once, he might have found Gwen's admission of such bestial need distasteful. Now, he understood it more than he ever wanted.

"I've hired some help to clean up," he said. "I'd like you to find something nice for Rey to wear. You'll remember in what attire she came here."

Gwen clearly _did_ remember. She nodded. "Even if that shift were not ruined, which I assume it is, the girl needs proper clothes."

"Exactly."

"I'll find something."

"Thank you."

She gave a surreptitious little sniff and peered at him closely. "Did she agree to the arrangement, or did you just lose yourself to your instincts entirely?"

Ben rubbed at the back of his neck self-consciously. "It was a mutual decision."

Gwen made a skeptical sound, but agreed to come back when she had something for Rey to put on.

The cleaning women arrived shortly after Gwen left. They smelled nothing amiss, just cheerfully set to work on the downstairs, pleased to have found someone willing to pay as generously as Ben was. They didn't know what happened. If Ben's collar had not concealed his cruel bite mark, they might have guessed. As it was, he appeared very much the respectable beta he always was before.

"We had a bit of an incident with a patient," Ben explained, taking inspiration from the errand boy. "I just need some assistance scrubbing...well, almost everything. Top to bottom. Start at the bottom while I tidy up the top."

They agreed.

Ben took the stairs two at a time. He found his naked mate and woke her with a kiss to the forehead.

"Darling, I'm sorry to disturb you. I've got to take apart the nest. Is that alright?"

She yawned, stretched, and nodded. "I suppose we must."

"It ought to be laundered," he said. "Before Ackbar can open the clinic again."

It broke his heart a little to deconstruct her fine creation, but it was well and truly soiled in the indecent product of their frantic coupling. So he stuffed all the linens in a large sack. He'd haul it down to the launderers later, when Rey was dressed and could go with him. For now he wrapped her in a blanket and put her onto his bed after he'd dragged it back to his room and placed it onto his frame. The room was still a disaster, so he instructed his mate not to set foot off the bed until he'd cleaned up all the glass and wood fragments.

Her eyes were wide. "You did this?"

Ben winced at the evidence of his mania. He'd never lost such control in his life — ever. He'd prided himself on being strictly disciplined when it came to emotional outbursts. This was...hard to look at.

"I'm sorry, alpha," she said softly, giving him an apologetic glance. "You suffered so because of what I did to you."

Ben didn't like that. He pushed her back onto the bed and kissed her once, soundly. "Don't apologize again. As if you had any more control over what happened to me than I did. Anyway, I'm _not_ sorry."

"You aren't? Even though you may lose your employment?" Her eyes widened.

"No." He skated a thumb over her mating mark. "Even that cannot make me regret it."

And he didn't. He couldn't. He ought to fear the consequences of suddenly presenting, but he couldn't bring himself to feel anything close to fear. Ben already had a plan. He'd formulated it last night while he held her and knew it would be their last time in this cycle. Ackbar would be forced to fire him, and Ben understood why. He'd take Rey to his parents' estate, and there they'd recalibrate. His grandfather had been an alpha and managed to maintain good standing in society. He was...a controversial figure, to be sure, but his name still drew respect among the uppercrust. Ben would find a way to carve a similarly honorable niche for himself.

And Rey.

He was excited for that part, for her. If she wanted to keep working with the engines of automobiles, Ben would support her. But if she wanted to pursue some other ambition, previously denied her because of her fortune and rank, she could now do it. He'd provide anything she needed to find her wings and fly.

But first, mending what he broke.

It took some time, restoring the vacant room to a respectable state and cleaning the shattered remains of his old life out of his own room. The cleaning women scrubbed the floors of the vacant room very well, but Ben would not let them into his. In the first place, they didn't need it. No secretions, omega or alpha or otherwise, had permeated this broken space, and in the second place, he did not want their scandalized glances when they saw how smashed his furniture was. Besides, he kept Rey modestly squirreled away there until Gwen returned.

She came into the clinic this time, pleased to find the air breathable again. Ben only knew of it because she knocked on his bedroom door and he, mistaking her for one of the cleaners, snapped at her that he'd told them to leave this room alone.

"I'll go if you want," she said with some amusement, "but you might want to take a look at what I've brought you first."

Ben opened the door immediately. Much of the room was clean by that point. He'd hauled out the broken furniture and swept up all the splinters and shards. Rey laughed at how the whole process made him cringe with embarrassment.

"Sorry," he said to Gwen. "Come in."

She did, cautiously. A quick glance around the room seemed to reassure her that everything was alright. "You've certainly transformed the place back to something almost decent," she decided. "Nicely done. The house smells clean too. Whatever you're paying those women, you should double it."

That said, she turned her attention to Rey, who had hastily re-wrapped herself from neck-to-toe in the blanket at the first rapport on the door. Gwen went and sat beside her on the bed. The hair on the back of Ben's neck stood up, a prickle of unease running down his spine.

"Oh, stop your growling, Doctor," Gwen said peevishly. "I don't want her. You can have her. Miss Summer, are you alright?"

Rey glanced between Ben, still irritated the proximity of this rival to his new mate, and Gwen. She grinned. "Yes, I'm very much alright."

"Did he hurt you? I promised I'd personally return him to a castrated beta existence if he hurt you."

"No!" Rey laughed. "Everything is fine. I thank you for your concern, nevertheless."

Gwen plucked the corner of Rey's blanket away from her neck. She sighed at the sight of the bite. "Well, you two really dive all the way in, don't you? I suppose it's a permanent thing now. You _do_ understand what this means, don't you?" She shot Ben a sharp glance. "In the eyes of the law, you're married now. She is 'Miss Summer' no more."

Ben frowned, definitely offended. He might not know the first thing about how to be an alpha himself, but he knew the laws regarding demihumans. "I am perfectly aware, yes."

"We know," Rey assured her, teeth catching the corner of her own lip in an outward flicker of that same self-consciousness Ben felt stir in the bond between them. She held up her hand and showed Gwen the ring on her thumb. "He gave me this the day before we...did it. We knew what we were doing."

Arguable, perhaps, especially from Ben's side. He'd only been operating on pure instinct — didn't even fully comprehend that he'd bitten until later. He hadn't made the conscious choice to make this stranger his bride, but he didn't regret it now regardless.

"That's huge," Gwen said, amused. "Perhaps you should have another made in her size."

"I will," said Ben.

"Well, you'll want to get dressed." Gwen handed her parcels over to Rey. "I'll go down and tell Ackbar it's alright to come in. He wanted me to ensure you were both quite recovered. He wants to see you both and ask his questions."

"What kind of questions?" Rey asked, brow puckering in that little look of consternation Ben recognized from her arrival in the clinic that first time.

"He's excited," Ben explained. "It's unprecedented, what happened to me. He'll want to know everything — or as much as we are willing to tell him. They'll just be questions about our experience. All medically minded, of course. He explained all this to you on our walk back from Maz's place, don't you remember?"

She blushed. "Not very well. It's all hazy."

"That's normal," said Gwen. She stood up. "I'll meet you both downstairs. Ah, Miss Sum— er, Mrs. Solo, I guess — the good doctor downstairs requested that you not bathe, if you have not already done so. Ben, he'll want a sample. You won't want him to do it, so I suggest you collect that yourself."

Ben glanced at Rey, nodded once, and followed Gwen back out into the hallway. She was right, the women had done an excellent job in their cleaning. The clinic smelled like new, as if it had never served as the love den of two mad individuals. Ben could find no traces of them left anywhere, even with his sensitive new olfactory abilities. Once he took that bag of laundry out, all hint of them would be washed away forever. Except what lingered under their skin. In their blood.

He wondered what it was that changed in the alpha and omega biology once the bite was introduced. Certainly science could not begin to study that strange bridge between their minds — something which Rey confirmed after she'd scarred him and taken a bit of his consciousness into her own as well. But perhaps they could find answers within the blood itself. New research was being done looking at the properties of blood. Perhaps —

Ben had to stop himself. It was exactly as he'd told Rey. Science would try to understand it, but he knew deep in his soul that the answers would never adequately explain exactly what it was that transpired between alpha and omega. Perhaps, though, useful discoveries might be made in the futile attempt.

The exam room was perfectly ordinary, except for the bent privacy card with its torn curtains. Ben would secure a new one immediately. Today, if he could. They had them as the hospitals. He'd replace Ackbar's before the first patient arrived.

And then there was the rug.

He thought he'd done a fair job saving it, but it was the only thing still left in the clinic that smelled like them. Truly regrettable. Well, new expeditions to South America were happening all the time. Perhaps Ben could persuade someone to bring back another. His mother would howl at the expense, which would exceed Ben's own salary and therefore would have to come from the family fortune, but there really was no choice. Ackbar would not notice the scent, but the patients surely would.

He decided to leave it for now. He collected a vial and thin metal instrument. Surgeons called them elevators. Ackbar and Ben rarely had cause to use one except as a probe, but he figured it might be helpful now. The slightly flared end, like a tiny spatula, would be a sufficient scoop for collecting his sample.

Ben returned to the room with treasures in hand. Rey must have worked very quickly to get dressed, because when he opened the door, she was just pinning her hair up with new pins Gwen had provided. She wore a fine red dress, jacket trimmed tight and close at the waist, collar fashionably high, and skirt gathered in generous layers in the back. It was a very fashionable look, even if she didn't have the exaggerated bustle most women used to bring absurd fullness to the back of their silhouettes.

Ben stopped in the doorway, jaw slackening. She glanced over at him.

"You don't have a functional mirror in here anymore. Does it look right? I've never worn so many layers."

He gaped. "You look marvelous."

It wasn't _exactly_ right. Her hair was more haphazardly thrown together than society ladies would like, and there still remained a touch of something wild about her — but no one who saw her like this would think she'd been raised in destitution.

She blushed. "Better than when I came here the first time?"

Ah. A tricky question, that one. Ben closed the door behind him and took a moment before replying. He'd seen his own father blunder his way through sticky questions like that time and time again, inadvertently offending his wife every time.

"I thought you were beautiful then," he said carefully. "Though I tried not to think it. Not very professional of me, I'm afraid. But I was struck by you then, and I am awed anew now."

She shot him a little grin. "I didn't realize I caught myself a diplomat. Nicely done."

He laughed, stepping in close to print a quick kiss on her cheek. "How do _you_ feel? That is the more important question."

"I feel...far too fancy," she decided. "And like I don't know myself at all. But then, I don't really know how I look. Perhaps it suits me."

"Not so well as being naked suits you," Ben teased, pulling her back towards the bed. "I think I like that best of all."

" _Shocking_ vulgarity from my prim and proper gentleman," she gasped.

"Lie back for just a moment, darling," he laughed. "I need to collect a sample."

"A sample of what?"

"Of our...particular blend."

"You were going to say 'secretions' again."

"Why do you hate that word so much?" He got onto the bed and knelt before her. She sat half-reclined against the wall.

She rolled her eyes as he set aside his instruments and drew down her starched new stockings and undergarments. "It sounds like an oozing pustule. Secretions. Awful. Like the yellow seepage that comes from a wound."

Ben smirked. "Well, that paints a vivid image alright."

"You couldn't do this before I got dressed?" He coaxed her knees apart and pushed her skirts up a bit.

"I didn't know you'd be so quick about it." He leaned in close, retrieving his vial and his thin elevator. He breathed on it to warm the chilled metal. "It won't take long."

With practiced ease, he inserted the elevator into that lovely tight place he'd so thoroughly adored over these past few days, and gently, gently, drew down a helping of that which he'd left inside her, thoroughly mixed with essence of her own. He held the vial against the very base of her cleft, pulling the sample out until it dripped down into the glass. Her scent spiked and he glanced up at her with a little grin.

"And what will this that you've robbed from me tell your old doctor friend?" she wondered, eyes alight with cheeky energy. She _liked_ this. Ben would have to remember to indulge their little perversion and play doctor with her from time to time. He could tell how it excited her.

"I'm not sure he knows exactly, only that he would like to send it to a laboratory to be analyzed. Perhaps it holds the key to our mysteriously aberrant biology."

"Aberrant." When he finished, she re-adjusted her underclothes, fitting everything back where it belonged. "I'm not aberrant. That's all you."

"Your presented far earlier than the typical age, and your cycle is misaligned with the general population. You are an anomaly, my dear. A lovely, perfect anomaly." He stood and held out his hand to her to help her up as well. When she rose, he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. Because he could, which was strange and wonderful, and because they both enjoyed it so. And oh that thrill. To taste her lips and kiss her like this, reminding him that though he'd spent four days buried inside her, this was still something new and thrilling. He didn't have any semblance of romance in his life before, and now here he was, kissing the woman bound to him forever.

"Aren't they waiting for us?" She laughed when he refused to let her go. "To ask their questions?"

Ben grumbled half-heartedly. "I'd rather do this."

"I think I'd like to know if I've ruined your life or not," she insisted, pushing him back.

"Ruined my life?" He frowned.

"Your livelihood is in jeapordy here, Ben."

Oh. That. He shrugged. "I have a plan. Don't worry. I'll take care of us."

"Only a man who has never worried where his next meal will come from could be so cavalier about the prospect of losing his job," she sighed.

Well, she wasn't wrong. Ben didn't fear for his ability to provide if Ackbar sacked him. He was very privileged. It pleased him to share that privilege with her now. "You will never have to worry about that again, my love. I'll make sure of it."

He took her hand and pulled her from the room, because she was right. Nice as it was to stay squirreled away here in this room discovering all the new delights of being together, life and all its complexities awaited them. It was time to face consequences.

The old doctor looked the same as he always did — enormous mutton chops and thick mustache, wire-rimmed spectacles, double-breasted coat, ever the respectable gentleman. And if Ben worried his employer wouldn't be able to look him in the eye after being bodily shoved out of his own exam room — he needn't have. Ackbar was fully animated, eyes wide and alight, eagerly greeting them when they came down the stairs.

"Doctor Solo, my boy, you look well. Very well. I dare say, far better than last we met. Do you feel like your old self again? You certainly look it. And Miss Summer, how lovely you are. You look refreshed as well. I assume the experience was mutually beneficial and all your symptoms were resolved with minimal discomfort?"

"Yes, thank you for letting us stay here," she told him, a becoming little blush creeping over her cheeks.

Ben handed him the vial and its creamy white contents. "I took a sample of the blend. I assumed you would want to have it analyzed."

Gwen grimaced and turned immediately to go back to her desk. Ben supposed this was all old hat to her. Not some medical marvel, just alpha spend and omega slick, neither of which belonged under a microscope.

Ackbar took it like it contained the mysteries of the world. "Well done. Wonderful initiative. Yes, we will have this analyzed at once. I will insist on taking a look myself. By the way, some interesting news regarding the blood sample I took from you. Are you familiar with the work of Doctor Landsteiner at the University of Vienna?"

"His discovery of blood groups as related to designation and blood transfusion." Ben nodded. He'd recently read about the work in a journal. It mystified and excited him, how designation could be identified in the blood, and why transfusing the wrong blood type to a person could be fatal. "It's exciting research."

"It is. I didn't stay with my sister after all. Rather, I went to Vienna and took him a portion of your sample, as well as one of my own, and one of Gwen's for comparison. Predictably, Gwen's blood tested for Type A. My own, Type B. But yours was so unusual, Doctor Landsteiner and his students became quite excited. Yours manifested properties of _both_ A and B. They've assigned a new blood group."

"Are they calling it Type AB?" Rey joked.

Ackbar looked at her with that eager expression again. "In fact they are! We are discussing the ramifications now, my colleagues and I. Imagine if there are others out there like Doctor Solo — betas with the potential to suddenly change their phenotype to manifest the other part of their genetic material."

"Fascinating," Ben said sincerely. He got that tingly sense of wonder that had accompanied him throughout medical school. The thrill of science advancing. He wondered if there were indeed others like him out there.

Ackbar paced around, gesturing with his hands. "And now for further investigation, we must ask ourselves what triggered the change. Between your work at institutions and the work you've done here for me, you've treated hundreds of omegas and never been affected. What is it specifically about _this_ girl that prompted your phenotype to change?"

Ben glanced at Rey, and she at him. Maybe the answer was in her blood. Maybe it was in that vial of fluids in Ackbar's hand. But Ben knew in his bones that there was more than blood and fluid at work here. She was the only one who could have prompted his change. He could have treated every omega in the world and remained a beta, but the moment she walked into his life, he transformed into what she needed.

She smiled and slipped her hand through his, shy pleasure humming in that unspoken space between them.

Ackbar took them into the exam room and asked them to sit. He seemed oblivious to the rug. Good. Rey certainly wasn't. She blushed and gave Ben a wide-eyed look. He smiled, shrugged, and they said nothing. The three of them spent the next hour satisfying his academic curiosity. He asked them a litany of questions, some invasive and personal, some benign and easily answered. Yes, said Rey, this hysterical episode compared favorably with those she'd endured alone. Yes, she experienced a total remission of her symptoms immediately upon the introduction of alpha ejaculate. Yes, it was the same for Ben. His madness broke into clarity with successful paroxysm. Yes, he felt much like his old self now, except for an intense protectiveness regarding Rey.

She seemed to like that answer. Happiness fizzled in the back of his mind.

Ackbar probed and prodded with his questions until he could think of no more. He expressed his congratulations and relief that they were mated.

"Oh, ethically I should be quite scandalized, I suppose. My junior partner has taken himself a wife who was not only a _stranger_ several days ago, and not only a common girl without even a last name to give her place in the world, but a _patient_ of his. It's outrageous. But setting ethics aside, I'm pleased. It is clear that you are compatible biologically, and I'm not sure either of you could have avoided imprisonment or institutionalization next time, if you insisted on going your separate ways after all this. Besides, it's not a sin if your actions were part of a holy union. Church or no church."

"What about Ben's job?" Rey asked, leaning forward. "He's mated now. He's not a threat to anyone. You won't send him to the docks to work with the other alphas, will you?"

"What?" Ackbar blinked at her. "No, of course not. This was an unfortunate turn of events, but you have found an immediate solution. As you say, he is no longer a threat and will be given allowed all the liberties he had before. He remains an intelligent and capable doctor."

"So he can keep his job?"

Ben was charmed by how concerned she was for him. He squeezed her hand. His fierce little mate, ready to fight for him.

Ackbar sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin between his chops. "There _are_ things to consider with that decision, my dear. For example, will _you_ be alright with him treating other omegas?"

Rey blinked. She swallowed and sat back, gaze falling to her lap. "He helps them. I...I'd want them to have help."

"That doesn't exactly answer the question, though, does it?" Ackbar said with a hint of knowing.

Ben could feel her struggle. Her conflict. Logic warring with emotion. Her higher self wrestling with her omega instincts.

Ackbar spared her. "And then there are the clients themselves to consider. They trust us because we are impartial betas. This is purely medical practice for us. Will their perception change if their doctor is an alpha? Will they trust us less? Will the treatment be less effective?"

"It would be more effective," Rey said immediately. "All an omega wants during that time is to be touched and cared for by an alpha. They would be...profoundly...affected…"

She was having a hard time getting the words out through tightly gritted teeth by the end, jealousy surging in the bond between the mated couple. Ben understood it. He wasn't lying when he told her it was normal for omegas to cry out for an alpha during their treatment. It was one thing when they were fruitlessly saying it to be a beta. It was another thing entirely for them to say it to _her_ alpha. Even if Ben felt no interest in responding.

Their animal selves were so hard to quiet. She could no more help her jealousy than he could his possessiveness.

"It's new," Ackbar said gently. "Gwen assures me that the intensity of your emotions will settle in time. I have decided _not_ to dismiss you, Ben. The decision to stay will be left up to you both, and my patients. Take some time. Take a sabbatical. Learn about what you are now, and what your new limits might be. You can let me know your decision when you're ready. Should you choose to return, we will see how the patients respond to you. What do you say, eh?"

"I will replace your window upstairs," Ben said, feebly hoping for some way to express his gratitude for the surprising kindness of the stodgy old doctor. "And the privacy apparatus." _And the rug._

Ackbar smiled. "Good man."

"I'll take Rey to meet my parents." He glanced at her. A tremor of trepidation rippled through their bond and her face paled a little. She needn't be nervous. They might not understand what had happened, but they were both good sports about trusting Ben, and if he liked her, they were sure to like her as well. "We'll stay there while we figure out our next steps."

"If I might make a suggestion," Ackbar said with amusement. "Perhaps one of the first things you should determine is where you shall live. If you return to the practice, I'm not sure it would be best for you to continue living here. Tolerant as I am of your change, Doctor, I can't have your cycles disrupting my business."

"Of course. I'm grateful you allowed us even this much." Ben squeezed Rey's hand again and stood, tugging her up with him. "If that is all…?"

"Yes, yes. Thank you for indulging me. We must try to learn as much as we can from your curious case, hm? The committee might request you come for an exam in the auditorium, you know. The brightest medical minds of our day are highly interested in studying you further."

"I don't know if they'll get the opportunity," said Ben. Eager as he was to assist the advancement of medicine, he didn't exactly want to become a test subject. There might be other ways to contribute to the field, his new designation notwithstanding.

* * *

Rey chatted with Gwen while Ben packed up his belongings. He might have felt rather wistful about saying goodbye to this place which had been his home for some time now — except that the future was so very unknown and so very interesting. He was more eager to get on with his new life with Rey than he was wallowing in the nostalgia of life's great transitions. The world would be different for him now, in ways he did not yet know how to anticipate. But readiness buzzed through him anyway, and he imagined himself disembarking in that foreign land again, only this time instead of fear, he felt eager to dive headfirst into everything.

They took Ackbar's soiled linens to the launderer and paid them to deliver them back to the clinic upon completion. Rey wanted to go by the boarding house to collect a few of her meager belongings, so they went. Ben waited outside, aware that a houseful of omegas would not appreciate an alpha in their midst. It was strange, being aware of himself like this now. He never had to think twice about his presence before. Betas could go anywhere they liked. They produced no ripples.

The way people glanced at him now, Ben could see that his new designation would take some getting used to.

The safe house looked different in the daylight. Not quite so grungy as he remembered. Maz did her best to keep a nice place for her tenants.

As for the old woman herself, she guarded Ben near the door with suspicion. Rey showed her the bite and told her she was fine, she needn't have worried. Maz didn't seem all that convinced.

"I thought you were friends with his mother," Rey demanded impatiently after Maz's attitude failed to soften. "Why do you seem to harbor such ill-will towards her son?"

"His family is trouble. I love his mother dearly, but that family does have a penchant for scandal. Besides, I know that he worked with Alucard Snoke. Any alpha who can watch that kind of omega suffering doesn't deserve to have an omega at all, especially a rare, wonderful creature like you, dear."

"I absolutely disavow everything Alucard Snoke does," Ben said quickly, grimacing. "It is the shame of my life that I ever studied with him. One day I hope to discover some new aspect to demihuman medicine that will give us what we need to shut him down."

Maz sniffed and look away.

Rey hugged her anyway. "Thank you for caring. I'm not sure what we're doing now, but when we figure it out, I will send word. And if it brings us back here, I'll return to work with you."

"You won't need the work, child," Maz said, patting her.

Rey laughed. "I'll _want_ the work, and that's almost the same thing."

"Will your alpha let you dress like a man and work on machines? That's not a very dignified for his high society lady to do."

Ben shrugged. "I'm not sure I get to _let_ her do anything. She will do as she pleases."

Maz peered at him shrewdly for a while. Finally she sighed, stuck out her hand and shook his. "Alright, fine, Benjamin Solo. She seems to want you, and you've got her. Be good to her."

"I will," said Ben.

* * *

The sun gleamed over pungent streets bustling with industry as the pair walked to the train station. Ben's mind tried to sift through all the information his new heightened senses could provide, and it might have been overwhelming were it not for his mate's arm linked through his, her grounding presence bright in his mind. She seemed as excited for the future as he was, if the effervescent thrill bubbling through the bond was any indication. Good. He was glad. Some part of him had feared, in those early moments after the raw lust cleared, that she'd resent him for all the changes his bite would bring into her life.

"I've been thinking," she said brightly, tipping her head back to glance at the cerulean sky in thought. "The way you talk about it, the human body sounds a lot like a machine. Like an automobile engine. All its parts and fluids must be working in harmony for healthy living."

Ben cocked his head, considering. "I suppose it is rather like a machine, yes."

"I like machines. Perhaps I might like learning about this one."

He glanced at her, brow lifting in surprise. "Are you saying you might like to study medicine?"

"Perhaps. If I get to work with you on improving care for both omegas _and_ alphas."

A slow smile spread over Ben's face. She wanted to work together? And she wanted to venture into that aspect of medicine where no one cared to go — understanding alpha biology? "There is a lot of work to be done. We still don't know anything about alphas, really, and we're still trating omegas after the symptoms of hysteria have begun."

She was animated now, a new spring in her step as they walked along. With her free hand, she gestured emphatically. "That's exactly what I mean. This treatment you and Ackbar have been using. You said there is a tincture you give after?"

"You didn't get it because the treatment fell apart in my distress," he said with some sheepishness.

She laughed. "Right. Is it the procedure or the tincture which waylays the heat? Because if it's the tincture, perhaps we might focus on developing that more."

"We'd need to find a chemist to work with us if we want to explore developing a medicine," Ben said with some thought. He knew of a couple chemists who might be interested. It might take a few years. They could get Rey through medical school while conducting research. "The Tico sisters, I should think."

"What if we could find a way to...suppress a heat? Or even block a rut? Wouldn't that give alphas the opportunity to explore careers and choices currently denied them? And if an omega only had to suffer a heat twice a year, say, they would not only be safer, but they too could have more education, more advancement in life."

Ben stopped dead in the street. They were near the station. The train whistled loudly as it came chugging to a stop, smoke billowing into the clear blue sky. Ben didn't care if they missed it. He was too struck by Rey's enthusiasm. He held her face in his hands and stared at her, marveling. Her clever green eyes looked back at him, alive with light, mirroring the grin that twitched over her lips.

"What is it?" she asked. "Do you like the idea?"

"Darling, it occurred to me just now that I am ardently in love with you." He blinked, surprised at himself. At the confession.

A riot of color stole over her cheeks. "You are?"

"I want to study all of that with you. I want to change the world with you. Do you think it's possible?"

Her grin spread wider. "Yes. I do."

He pulled her to him, lips fitting over hers, heart bursting with fullness and purpose. His fingers splayed over her neck, over the mark he'd given her, and she kissed him back just as fiercely. Someone made a passing rude remark about their lewd public display, and the two of them broke apart with a laugh. He took her hand and she gathered her new skirts. They ran to catch the train, this pair that somehow fell into the exact recipe for happiness. Two strangers, strangers no more. And an idea of the future, built piece by piece, together.


End file.
